Good Intentions
by nemain13
Summary: Mary and Marshall are on assignment protecting a witness, but can they resolve the problems between themselves? In this chapter: Shopping with the Marshals.
1. Raph

**Good Intentions**

**A/N: This is my first attempt at fanfic, so please be patient, but please review! If it's crap, I need to know. I do NOT love Raph, but he wouldn't leave me alone, so I wrote this from his POV. If anyone likes it enough to R&R, there may be chapters from other characters. He just had to get his in first, I guess....**

**As for spoilers, there are only very minor ones for early season two here, nothing too shocking if you watch the show, really. I think you'll be safe if you missed the end of the season.  
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**Disclaimer: They're not mine, any of them. I am just borrowing them a bit, so please don't get mad and sue me. It would be a total waste of your time and money, I assure you.**

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_It's a control freak thing. I wouldn't let you understand. ~ S.H. Underwood  
He who strikes the first blow admits he's lost the argument. ~ Chinese Proverb_

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Raph stood just outside the door and rested his head against the wood for a moment. He drew in a deep, calming breath and promised himself that no matter what, tonight, they were not going to fight. Things were not going to get out of control the way they always seemed to every time he and Mary had a night together at home since she'd agreed to marry him. He shifted the bag of groceries in his arm, unconsciously flexed his fingers in the same gesture he used to use to focus himself just before he lifted his bat to step up to the plate, turned the knob, and went in. Later he'd remember the cool of the Albuquerque evening air and the smoothness of the surface of the woodgrain fondly as the last moments of peace he had that night.

When he entered the house, all his carefully-tended optimism wobbled. The sight of the gaping holes and the pink insulation and wiring trailing from them never failed to tighten up his stomach. A home should be a place of stability, of wholeness, and the wounded walls of this house seemed to be mocking his efforts to create that environment with Mary. Worse still, he would always be reminded of the night the FBI crashed into the living room in the middle of the night, guns drawn, and tore Brandi out in tears. There had been nothing he could do but stand helpless on the sidelines and watch. "Focus. Put it out of your mind. You can't control that right now, so just let it go. Just focus on putting together a nice meal for you and Mary tonight," he told himself, and so he deliberately walked past the place where he'd started repairs before Mary had told him in no uncertain terms to stop and toward the kitchen to unload the groceries.

Brandi came darting into the living room when she heard the sound of the front door open, her eyes just a little too blue, her face just a little too pale, and Raph realized that she was inches away from one of her famous crying jags. Distantly, Raph felt that he should ask her what was wrong, but Brandi put on an overbright smile, so at least she was going to brave it out., and all he felt was a rush of relief. When had this become so common that he didn't even have the curiosity anymore to try to find everyday tragedy had Brandi wound up so tightly?

Where was Mary? The battered purple Probe had been out front. He exchanged casual conversation with Brandi while he put away the groceries, and tried as hard as possible not to notice the way Brandi followed him around the kitchen like a small, hungry creature waiting to be petted. He didn't like the way she followed him with her eyes, the way she always insinuated there was something more between them than a family relationship. Maybe once he'd almost slipped, but he was in control of himself now, and Mary was the woman he loved, the woman he'd chosen....

As if his thoughts conjured her, Mary herself stalked out of the short hallway, cellphone firmly held to her ear, dressed not in a comfortable "night at home outfit," but rather in one of the jackets and slacks outfits that Raph had come to know and almost hate because they meant she was going to her job, her all-important, super-secret job. As she crossed the room, her eyes flicked to Raph and to Brandi, but her attention was clearly with whomever was on the other end of the phone. She took the large black duffel she was carrying over to the door and dropped it there before turning back toward the kitchen.

"...Yeah, yeah, yeah, smartass. Keep it up..... You know I DO have a gun......" She rolled her eyes and smiled at whatever was being said over the phone, and even though she was in a state of constant motion as she picked up a couple of paperbacks off the shelf and added them to the bag, then came to the refrigerator, grabbed a bottle of water, and opened the top, her body language was relaxed. "Just get over here and pick me up......Ten minutes." She ended the call with the same mischievous little smile playing across her lips. Of course. She was talking to Marshall. He should have known, really.

Raph felt the irritation that had first begun when he'd seen the her with the black bag click up another notch. Everything he'd planned, everything he'd wanted for this evening, and now.... "You're leaving?" She holstered her phone, and in that small movement, her entire stance changed. She was on guard. Her eyes met his. That smile _he_ never got to see was completely gone now. Something about that change, that shuttering off of her tenderness sharpened all the knives, yanked all the chains, and he felt the anger and hurt he'd sworn not to indulge tonight blossom like some deadly flower.

"I have to go to work, Raph. I will probably be gone a couple of days. I'll see you when I get back, okay?" Her tone was light, but forced. Working hard to maintain the peace. What he had tried to do. A _tolerance_.

"That's it? That's all you're going to say? 'I'm going away for a couple of days. See you when I get back. Sit. Stay. Good dog.'"

"What the hell, Raph? Did you get hit in the head today at some point? Should I be concerned about a concussion?" Her voice held some heat, but was still not heavily combative. It was more the voice of a person talking to someone being totally unreasonable, the tone he hated. She knew he hated it. She crossed her arms, shifted her stance to face him fully. Did she even know she'd settled her weight on the balls of her feet like someone getting ready for physical combat? He glanced at her hands where they were gripping her forearms, another outward sign of her own struggle for control, and it was then that he noticed the absence of her ring. Raph was vaguely aware that Brandi had decided discretion was the better part of valor and had scurried out of the kitchen when their voices had become raised.

"Why do you think it's okay to shut me out all the time? We're going to be married, Mary. Man and wife. That means that we are going to have to put our lives together. _All_ of it. There is not going to be any you anymore. Any me. Just us. That's what marriage IS. It's built on trust. It's more than just two people playing house. Why can't you see that?"

She pulled away from him as if he'd physically grabbed at her. There was a look of something like restrained horror or revulsion on her face. There was a knock at the front door, and a moment later, Marshall Mann opened the door and looked in. One glance told him everything he needed to know about the confrontation taking place around the kitchen island. Without saying a word, he simply stepped in to grab Mary's bag, and Mary turned to glance at her partner. Raph didn't miss the moment of unspoken communication between them. That Mary had this intimacy with Marshall was something that Raph constantly tried to tell himself was just another part of her job. He tried to be grateful that there was someone who was protecting Mary in whatever this was she did. Sometimes, though, like tonight, Marshall was just another reminder of how wide the gap between the two of them really was.... Mary turned back to Raph, Marshall took the bag, closed the door, and went back to the vehicle.

As her attention came back to Raph, he braced himself. Now the yelling part of the evening would commence. She simply looked at him a moment. "Studying me like I was something she's never seen before....like a different species," Raph thought. This was the calm before the storm. It didn't happen the way he was used to, though. Something completely different occurred.

"We have had this conversation over and over, Raph. I'm not trying to shut you out, but I cannot tell you more than I have. You're right about one thing, though. Maybe this is about trust. Maybe this is about _you_ not trusting _me_..." She shook her head, raised a hand in a gesture of halting herself, a gesture of warding. "I have to go. I cannot do this with you right now. I _will_ not do this with you right now. We will talk more when I get back." Mary never raised her voice. She did not look back. The door closed, and Raph was left alone with a half-unpacked bag of groceries, a house mostly destroyed, and the sinking sense that everything he most wanted was sliding further and further out of his grasp with every passing moment.  


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**Now, make your way to that almighty green & white button and let me know what you think, please. **


	2. Mary, Before

**A/N: So, here's part two. Raph had his say in his typical control freak way, but now the ones we're all fond of are up. Hope I can do 'em justice. This time, I'm going to let Mary show us her view of things. This actually starts the day before Raph comes home with the groceries because I wanted to show some of the difference between the way Mary is with Raph and the way she is with Marshall. Her POV of the scene with Raph will be along in a later chapter. Love it? Hate it? Press the big button at the bottom and release that stress....**

**Disclaimer: Not mine, even a little, more's the pity.**

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Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond. ~Jeffrey Borenstein

You have freedom when you're easy in your harness. ~Robert Frost

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The day before Raph came home with a bag of groceries and the foolhardy assurance that he could keep control of the situation, Mary and Marshall were finishing up paperwork in the WITSEC office. Their day off stretched before them, rare, precious, and inviting. Marshall had planned one of his geek quests, and he was currently trying to entice her to join him.

"Come on, Mare. Experimental Geography at the Museum of Art and History. How can you possibly say no to that?" He was sitting on the corner of her desk, long denim-clad legs stretched comfortably in front of him crossed at the ankles, and he was looking at her with that little-kid grin of pure glee on his face. She could feel her own lips turn up in response and fought for the frown she knew was her role. She knew that part of his enjoyment was coming from the idea of the exhibition tomorrow, from the idea of seeing something new, learning something more, but part of it was coming from the exchange that he knew was coming next between them today, too.

"Jesus, Marshall. Experimental Geography? Congratulations. I think you've reached new levels of nerddom. Is there some kind of merit badge or ribbon or something?" To herself, she was thinking, "Experimental Geography...what...the...hell???"

Marshall shifted slightly and cackled that crazy little laugh of his. "It's going to be a fabulous exhibition, Mare, I promise. It's all about the way man and nature interact with each other as recorded in works of art. Geographer Trevor Paglen coined the term "experimental geography" in 2002, but since then there have been some really revolutionary works created...." Marshall kept talking, but Mary lost focus a bit as he enthused about sound installations of runners breathing and photographs of L.A. freeway traffic. She couldn't quite bring herself to stop him, though. His long-fingered hands were animatedly gesturing, he was quoting names she couldn't have spelled if her life had depended on it, and he was clearly having a great time, so she let him run on another moment before lowering the expected boom.

She glared at him, and the longer he ran, the less she was having to force it. "Marshall, you have to shut up about the Experimental Geography, or so help me, I'm going to rearrange some of _your_ personal terrain features."

"You know you're always welcome to get your hands on any of my landscape that catches your attention, Mare," he said, and he started leaning away from the swing he knew was coming, "but who knew you'd want it immortalized as a work of art?" Marshall asked, one brow raised.

"Only the crime scene crew will think what I do to you is a work of art, numbnuts, trust me. Get your skinny, geekish backside off my desk." And she swung.

Marshall chuckled, dodged, and headed back to his desk. "Seriously, though.... If you wanted to go...."

Mary thought about it. Even though she didn't give even the teeniest shit about Experimental Geography, she knew from experience that anything she went to with Marshall would be fun because she'd be going to it with Marshall. He'd drag her along from exhibit to exhibit, filled to the brim with the trivia and weirdness that made him uniquely Marshall, and she'd threaten to shoot, maim, or otherwise abuse him every fifteen minutes. Secretly, she'd enjoy the bits of knowledge he dropped, and when he inevitably bought french fries with lunch or other snacks during the day (which he would do because she'd ask/badger him to do), he'd let her steal as many as she wanted. She'd end her day off feeling rested and amused, comforted and comfortable.

"As much fun as that sounds like," she rolled her eyes and smirked, "...I....can't. I have some... things... I need to take care of around the house tomorrow." She tried not to notice the way Marshall's bounciness stilled just that little bit before he recovered, the way he studied her for a second, just a second, before his flippant tone resumed.

"Yeah, well....Don't come crying to me when you hear about the sculptural reproduction of the broadcast antennas in the San Gabriel Mountains is all I'm sayin'."

"I'm sure that I'll find some way to hide the disappointment," she said and lobbed a ball of wadded-up yellow legal-pad paper at him. He caught it one-handed with narrowed eyes and a superior little smile and flung it back at her, starting a paper fight that escalated in violence and lasted until Stan stepped out of his office, looked at them both incredulously (they were frozen, each hunkered behind his or her respective desk, a pile of paper balls underneath, one in the hand, peering over the edge at each other), muttered something that sounded like, "U.S. Marshals," and simply turned around without saying another word.

Mary couldn't resist such an appealing target. She cocked a quick glance at Marshall and saw the same mischief in his eyes. She grabbed at a ball of paper from her under-desk arsenal, aimed, thought better of it, readjusted her aim, and let fly. When the yellow ball of paper whizzed past his head, missing by less than an inch, Stan turned and gave his two star Marshals a glare that had famously turned lesser mortals to piles of quivering goo. Mary and Marshall were sitting in their desk chairs, the very pictures of innocence. They looked at Stan, at each other, and then as if they'd choreographed the movement, they shamelessly pointed an accusing finger at one another before collapsing in hysterical laughter. "Reasonable doubt," choked out Marshall, and then they were both laughing too hard for speech. Stan chose dignity and just walked away.

When all the paperwork was finally done and the last paper missile was rounded up and thrown away, it was very late. Finally, though, there was nothing else to be done. Mary shut down her computer, waited while Marshall did the same. They stood up, collected jackets, and walked to the elevator. As they waited for it to come up, they stood in a moment of companionable silence. Mary cut her eyes to Marshall's face and bumped his shoulder with her own. "Hope you have fun with your geographic crap tomorrow. Try not to pick up too many guys, okay? You know how fickle that artsy-fartsy crowd can be." He bumped her back. "Shut up," he laughed, his eyes wrinkling.

They lingered a few more minutes at their vehicles, and Mary tried very hard to tell herself that the sadness she felt when she got in her battered Probe and closed the door was only because she was tired from a long day at the end of a long week and not because of the tall, geeky man who was her best friend pulling away from her in the GMC. Marshall honked his horn twice as he pulled away and gave her a little wave. Mary returned it with a sigh and pulled out toward her house, toward Brandi, Jinx, and Raph and her day off with her family and fiancee, toward all the things that were supposed to be making her happy.

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**A/N: Marshall's exhibition is real – See it for yourself at the Albuquerque Museum website: .**

**You know what to do. The big green and white button compels you.....**


	3. Mary's Day Off

**A/N: I'm so deeply honored by your feedback. I'm also as giddy as the cliched schoolgirl skipping down the sidewalk and swishing her plaid skirt that so many of you like this paltry little effort of mine. Reviews are like Diet Mountain Dew and good, loud music; they make my brain go faster.**

**I'm going to go ahead and say this covers material in season two all the way up to but excluding the season finale just to be on the safe side. It may not actually do so, but I can't quite remember what fit in which title, and I don't want to spoil anything crucial for anybody.  
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**We have Mary's POV in this chapter. We're back to the day that Raph came home with the groceries. This is Mary's day off, and we'll spend a bit of it with her before heading out the door to other events. As always, I hope you'll R&R. The big button won't hurt you, I promise....**

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When I look at my hands and in my heart, I see stress as Lady Macbeth saw blood. ~Berri Clove

Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday. ~Author Unknown

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Mary Shannon was cursing under her breath with zest and energy as she moved around her room in a muted fury. Here she was throwing the last bits of replacement gear into her always-ready trip bag, a new tube of travel toothpaste in the zipper pouch with the toothbrush, checking to make sure there were clean underwear and socks in the bag, and whatever she'd hoped she'd have with Raph tonight, whatever she'd planned by way of a night at home to try to soothe the uneasiness between them was over before it was even begun. She wished now she had just gone with Marshall to see his photos and statues. At least she'd been able to Wal-Mart and pick up a few things for herself today, so there was toothpaste to go in the bag, she told herself. The day hadn't been a total waste. Her mind flickered back over her day off.

It had started out beautifully. She'd slept late, the rarest of luxuries in a life too often interrupted by the life-threatening emergencies of her witnesses or the emotional circuses of her own family. When she woke, she had been perfectly still and allowed the emptiness of the house to sink into her like a healing balm. Jinx, she knew, would be at outpatient rehab. Brandi would be at school. A day of peace in her own home stretched before her like a placid lake.

Once she got up, she took a long shower (in which she had plenty of hot water for once) and slipped on a tattered, comfortable pair of jeans and an old black t-shirt that said "I Void Warranties" she'd borrowed (_okay, stolen_) from Marshall while at his house one day. She wasn't a computer geek like her partner, but she certainly agreed with the sentiment on the shirt. Besides, put anything with multiple parts in her hands, she'd told Marshall with a toothy and menacing grin, and she could sure as hell manage to find a way to reconfigure it in ways the factory never intended.

In the kitchen, she indulged herself by making breakfast, cooking a large, messy omelet dripping with cheese. She opened a cabinet and took a moment of pleasure in picking her favorite color of plate, bright red, from the sturdy Fiestaware in the cabinet and slid the cheesy meal out of the heavy cast iron onto it. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down on a stool at the island to eat, savoring the smell of the coffee, the taste of food she'd made for herself with her own hands, and the rare silence in the house in equal measures.

She made a list of the things she was out of, grabbed her keys, coaxed and cursed the Probe to life, mentally girded her loins for the coming task, and headed to Wal-Mart. As she pulled into the parking lot, a long line of carts rather suddenly appeared to block her path as they were brought back to the building by a teen-aged employee. "Damn cart jockey," Mary muttered, and she briefly wished for her gun. At least the store wasn't using that smarmy bouncing smiley face logo any more....

Pushing a cart up and down the aisles was, as always, a little surreal. The beach towels, back-to-school ring binders and crayons, and cutesy dog clothing on the various aisles somehow caused a creeping unease, something she never felt even in the darkest of back alleys. "Jesus. How do people stand this place?" she mused, throwing a few of the items on her list in the cart and eying the woman nearby was calmly shopping while her three small boys were currently in varying stages of crying, hitting one another, and screaming for a toy that, _oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph help us_, made jungle animal noises when various light-up buttons were pushed.

"_They tell me __**my**__ job is dangerous..._." she thought. "_Marshall would know what every damn one of those animal noises are and he'd enjoy playing with it, too,_" was the next random though through her head. That's probably why although Mary had turned her cart to flee, when a display on the end of an aisle suddenly caught her eye, she pulled up suddenly, furtively looked left and right, swept one of the items from it into her cart, and headed for the checkout with a smile on her face. The smile lasted precisely as long as it took her to see there were only two checkers working the entire twenty lanes...

Back home, Mary got her purchases into the house and settled on the couch with a bag of chips and the remote. She was looking forward to an afternoon of absolute motionlessness on the couch when the door opened. Brandi's courses ended at midday, and when she came slowly through the door, head down, clutching her bookbag and a sheaf of paper, Mary knew whatever alignment of the stars had allowed her to have a few minutes of peace was done. She felt her family obligations slide back onto her like a familiar weight between her shoulder blades.

"Squish?" No response. Brandi stood looking pale and fragile by the closed door, the only sign of her having heard Mary was a slight trembling in the hand that was holding the paper. "Brandi? What is it? What's wrong?"

Brandi looked up, and Mary could see that she'd been crying for some time. That brought out equal parts of annoyance and protectiveness in her. One part of Mary wanted to shake Brandi and make her stronger. One part just wanted to wrap her up and make sure nothing could hurt her anymore. She didn't like the internal conflict, so her next statement came out more sharply than she intended.

"Brandi, what is it? Don't just stand there. Tell me what's going on." _So I can fix it and get back to my day off...._

Brandi walked across to the couch holding out the piece of paper. "I got my first English composition back today," she said, her voice weak, wavering.

"_Oh...shit,_" thought Mary. So much for her acute Marshal instincts. Why hadn't she put two and two together when she'd seen the paper in her hand? And hadn't Brandi been up all night one night last week working on something, asking Jinx and even Raph to look at drafts of it? That had been during a particularly nasty two-day case in which one of Mary's witnesses had been discovered by the people trying to kill her, so Mary had been running in and out of the house so much that she'd only glanced at the composition when Brandi had asked for _her_ opinion on it.

Mary saw her afternoon of Bette Davis movies and tortilla chips disappear as though by magic. "Squish..." she forced her voice to patience and softness, "come sit down and tell me about it." Brandi's eyes welled up again, and she collapsed on the couch, thrusting the paper into Mary's hands before dissolving into an almost incoherent wail of tears and self-destructive comments.

Mary soothed and petted, and finally got Brandi to go and lay down for awhile. Mary returned to the living room and was absently flipping through the pages of the composition that had caused so much drama to see just what the hell had gone so wrong with it when Jinx came home, trilling a greeting as she came through the door. Mary winced, and gestured impatiently for her to be quiet. Jinx, never flattened for long, came to the couch, perched on the arm, and looked over Mary's shoulder at the essay. "Oooh, is that Brandi's? Did she just get it back today, then? Gosh, that grade isn't very good, is it?"

Half a dozen sarcastic comments welled up in Mary's mouth. She really, really hated rhetorical questions masquerading as conversation, and her mother was the queen of them. Swallowing the snark, Mary replied, "No, Mom, it isn't very good. Brandi came home crushed, and she's asleep now. That's why I was telling you not to be so loud, so you won't wake her up. She'll feel better if she can just get some rest and some perspective on this."

Jinx leaned back to look at her. "Rest and perspective, huh? That's a laugh. You know what would have really made her feel better? Making a good grade on this...."

"Mom...."

"...and you know how that would have happened? With your help, Mary. The whole night she was working on this essay, you didn't lift one finger to help her, not even when she asked you to read over it for her...."

Mary just gripped the bridge of her nose where she could feel the stress building pressure which she knew from experience would soon be pounding like the hammers of hell inside her skull. "Mom....stop...."

Jinx, of course, was performing a monologue, one from the play The Sainted Mother, and did not stop.

"Honestly, Mary. Would five minutes have been too much for you to take to proof-read your sister's paper?"

That day? The day that Mary and Marshall had been forced to bundle poor Margaret Finney into the back of the GMC with only a suitcase and race her to the airport because of the relentless efforts of the street gang trying to keep her from testifying? Her security had been compromised in the stupidest and most whimsical of ways; she'd quite literally run into an old friend who was attending a performance at the KiMo Theater while on a business trip in Albuquerque. Her friend had called Margaret by her name, and Margaret had not even stayed to see the rest of the show. Less than twenty-four hours later, a gun crew rolled into Albuquerque looking for Margaret, the result of the friend's inability to keep her mouth shut during a call home to her best friend, but of course Margaret had been handed off to other Marshals by that time and was safely away. All that remained for Mary and Marshal was the cleanup.

Mary knew her mother didn't know about Margaret Finney and her flight. Mary knew her mother didn't know about the long night Marshall and she had spent in Margaret's sad, deserted house amongst the bits and pieces of a life hastily abandoned, waiting together for people who were intent on murder. She tried to temper her response with that knowledge, but to sit and be attacked as a villain for something like this.... And added to it, the very real guilt she _did _feel because she _didn't_ have those five minutes to sit down and go through Squish's paper for her....

"Look, Mom, I am sorry that I apparently I didn't live up to _your_ gold standard here, but when the hell did I become Brandi's keeper? She is a big girl, and I am not always going to be able to go through every paper for her. She is going to have to learn to stand on her own two feet with this school thing. She doesn't need me or you or Raph to do her work for her....if she didn't do well this time, well...she'll do better with the next one."

Jinx compressed her lips and was gearing up for round two, complete with waterworks, when Mary's phone rang. "_Thank all the gods and angels there are,_" Mary thought as she held up a hand to ward off whatever was coming out of her mother's mouth next. Stan's words put her into go mode, and she simply turned and walked away from her mother and the melodrama in the living room to begin pulling together what she'd need to fly out in an hour. Everything related to poor Margaret Finney had gone to hell, and now she and Marshall were going to be called out of state to deal with her situation. _"Funny how dealing with someone who by definition is the most luckless person in creation sounds like more fun that staying here tonight," _thought Mary, as she opened the bedroom closet and took out the huge duffel that was her long-trip travel gear.

She'd heard Raph come in a little while later, but she couldn't take the time to go and say hello. Since Stan's call, she had been methodically moving through the stages of preparation for an extended absence. As she finished zipping the battered black duffel, her phone rang. A glance at the caller ID told her it was Marshall, making the arrangements to pick her up, as expected. He was full of his day and trivia from his trip to the museum. They chatted idly, sniping back and forth at one another, and she hefted the bag to take it into the living room. Hearing him relating the details of his art exhibition restored some of the peace she'd had during her day and made her turn back to her room briefly. She took the silly, impulsive purchase from Wal-Mart out of its plastic bag while Marshall's voice filled her ear and turned it over in her hands, considering. She unzipped her bag, stuffed the item deep inside underneath several layers of clothing, closed everything up again, and strode down the hallway with a grin on her face imagining Marshall's reaction to it.

She carried the duffel into the living room to leave it by the door, and as she talked to Marshall, her mind raced back and forth over the minutia of leaving on a trip of indeterminate length. She picked up a couple of paperbacks she hadn't read yet (_Has Marshall read either of these? I don't think so...)_ and took them over to include in the bag. The last of her preparations done, and the parting insults traded with her partner, she hung up her phone and took a sip of the water she'd snagged from the refrigerator. It was time to tell Raph she was going to have to leave. And...._hell_..._he's bought fix-a-special-dinner groceries, hasn't he? _ Mary knew that Raph was upset the minute she looked up at him, even before spoke, and she felt the stress that had lessened for a moment during her phone call with Marshall return.

When Raph did speak, he put the finishing touches on her day. Instead of the understanding she kept hoping Raph would somehow develop toward her job, especially since she'd bent to both her own guilt and his unending need and told him about WITSEC, there were only more accusations, more of his horrifying ideas about what marriage meant, and more demands on her to conform to another image of Mary Shannon. Did he even know what he was asking of her? Did he really even care? The muscles between her shoulder blades were so tight, they could have been plucked like the strings of a harp....

Marshall held her eyes momentarily as he came through the door a few minutes later. It was a small look, the type that partners develop over long contact with one another, but they spoke volumes to each other. In it, she saw the law man assess the situation, the partner offer his assistance, and the friend give her quiet reassurance before Marshall gathered the black bag and withdrew.

Mary took a deep breath as the door closed softly behind him. She didn't have to have this argument now. There wasn't time. Margaret Finney was waiting halfway across the country for her two Marshals to come to the rescue, and shouldering the burden of luckless Margaret's life was so much easier than dealing with her own suddenly. She left Raph with some pointed but quiet words and slipped out the door to where Marshall was waiting in the truck.

He didn't crank it immediately. He didn't offer a hand or even turn to look at her as she fastened the seat belt. Marshall just sat a moment, still, looking out the windshield, long fingers wrapped loosely around the steering wheel, and the sounds of late evening filled the air through the rolled-down windows.

Mary stirred in her seat, looking at the cracked pavement of the street, the fading yellow of the stripe down the middle. Finally, in a voice struggling for normal, she said, "It's okay, Marshall. I will be okay. Just crank the damn truck, and let's go. We have a flight to catch and a witness who needs us." His hands flexed, tightened momentarily, and then he did as his partner requested.

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**A/N: What do you think Mary bought Marshall at Wal-Mart?  
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**This was a long one, so I hope you stayed with it. Feed the green & white button, please.....  
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**See the KiMo Theater at the Albuquerque City website. It looks lovely.  
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**The shirt Mary stole from Marshall is also very real and can be seen at the ThinkGeek website.  
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	4. Marshall's Day at the Museum

**A/N: With the greatest of trepidation, I give you Marshall. He gets three quotes...well...because he's Marshall.**

**Disclaimer: Not mine; just gently playing with them.

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Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love. ~ Charles M. Schulz, Charlie Brown in "Peanuts"

There is no remedy for love but to love more. ~Henry David Thoreau

If I love you, what business is it of yours? ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Marshall Mann had gone to his Experimental Geography exhibition, and really, it had been very good. He'd slowly toured the museum absorbing every word of the placards and posters that accompanied the varied art. _It was amazing how the artists had taken the most everyday facets of the landscape around mankind and reinvented them_, he thought. _There were a couple of places in Albuquerque that really might make interesting subjects for this kind of thing...._ He practically itched to get his hands on his own digital camera and attempt a few shots of his own. One of the last pictures in the exhibit featured an urban parking lot with one old, battered, abandoned car in it. _That one, I know I could recreate pretty effectively if I just wanted to imitate_, he laughed. _I could call it __ABQ Probe__.... _

He'd chatted amicably with a very pretty lady named Elizabeth who was also there, and after they'd walked around the end of the exhibit together with her laughing at his puns and trivia jokes and making those little soft feminine touching gestures on his arm, he'd ended up leaving with her personal number on the back of the card for the small art gallery she owned downtown. As he'd tucked that into his wallet, he'd heard an echo of Mary's voice commenting on the arsty-fartsy nature of the guys at this exhibition, and he grinned a little mischievously to himself. Oh yeah, next time he and Mary got coffee, this expensive little hand-pressed business card with Elizabeth's beautiful handwriting would have to "accidentally" fall out with his cash, since it seemed he always paid. _That would just wind her up but good...._

He went to the museum store because he wanted the gallery guide for the exhibition and a few postcards to send to his sister and his mother. An exquisite stylized silver necklace in the shape of a stalking panther handmade by a local artist also caught his eye, the graceful yet somehow dangerous simplicity of its lines making him think of immediately of Mary. He ran his fingertips over the case above it, tracing on the glass countertop the elemental shape of the animal as it lunged, and he wondered if her day off had been what she wanted it to be. His fingers ran the shape again. He considered their conversation the night before.

He'd known when he'd asked her to come to this exhibition that the chances of her joining him were only about 50/50 at best. Since Raph had proposed, Marshall and Mary's off-day adventures, always so reliable before, had slowed. Mary was trying to spend time with her fiance, and really, Marshall told himself for the hundredth time, that was understandable. His fingers flickered over the silver shape again, caressing without actually being able to touch it. It was the sort of change that had been happening more and more since the day his attention to detail betrayed him into taking her hand and noticing the tiny, inconsequential lightness around her fourth finger, left hand, the miniscule indentation that had been a fault line that had opened up and swallowed his world.

He turned away from the glass case disgusted with himself. He paid for his purchases and walked out to the museum cafe, his earlier buoyancy over Elizabeth completely gone. To be honest, he didn't even notice her card as he shuffled the bills in his wallet to purchase the latte he'd ordered. He settled at a small table in the corner and opened the exhibition guide on the table in front of him. He did not see a single page. All he could see was the light that had refracted from the memory of that gaudy, utterly common diamond set that Mary had slid from her pocket and onto her finger with all the guilt of someone confessing to first-degree murder. _What __had__ Raph been thinking when he picked that gimcrack bauble out for Mary? Didn't he know she would never be comfortable wearing something like that? No wonder she kept it in her pocket instead...._

Marshall gave up the pretense and closed the gallery guide. He leaned back in the metal bistro chair and gave himself up to the thoughts darting around in his head. _"I will not turn into some miserable Gothic stereotype, some Heathcliff waving a calendar around marked off with dates she's spent with __**him**__ and dates she's spent with me demanding my share of her time. It's not what she needs, not what she deserves, and anyway, nothing would make her run faster."_ His recent reading for a literature course he was taking for fun danced in his head, and the image of himself cast in the Bronte mold was amusing enough a mental rabbit to chase a moment. He twisted the scene, tried to fit Mary into the dark melodramatic halls of Wuthering Heights and snickered to himself. _"Let's face it. Catherine Earnshaw is just no match for Mary Shannon. Mary Shannon is hell on wheels and she carries a gun."_ The image of Mary and Catherine in a cat-fight with Mary slamming the spoiled literature-princess alpha-female's head into a flagstone floor popped into his head and made him laugh loud enough to attract concerned glances from the museum employee behind the coffee bar. Marshall, lost in his own thoughts, sipped his coffee unaware of the attention. Although the book was never going to be a favorite of his, it had been worth the reread just for this moment....

"_Besides, if there were such a calendar, I would SO win that fight." _ Smirk. "_She sees me every day. It's my house she crashes at when that circus she lives in gets to be too much. I'm the one she comes to with her problems. I'm the she trusts enough to lean on while she holds her world together when Jinx or Brandi or even __**he**__ tries to shatter it. I'm the one who makes her laugh, who can tease her out of being angry, who is strong enough to take the punches when teasing doesn't work, whom she permits to hold her in the middle of the worst of it...okay, only sometimes, and not for very long, but still.... I'm her Keeper, and that pretentious jackass is basically just stress relief." _The smirk faded. He turned the coffee cup in his hands and stared at it without seeing it, brows lowered. "_So why is she marrying him?"_ This was the question that he could not answer no matter how many times he set his formidable intelligence to it. This was the question that kept him up at nights, silent during stakeouts, and staring at her when he could get away with it without her noticing as if the answer would magically appear in a blaze of light and understanding.

He had seen so many men come and go in Mary's life, "_no, so many different forms of the same man, the Amazing Screwable Stress Relief"_ or ASSRs as he'd long ago secretly dubbed them all in his head. Most of them were only ribald stories Mary told him about afterward, and as such, they ruffled him not at all. They were a necessary part of her functioning, something he couldn't take care of for her. "_Well,_" he amended mentally, "_something she won't __**let**__ me take care of for her...._" God knew he was perfectly willing to help her with that aspect of her complicated life, too. He knew it would be good, knew he could be good to her and for her. Hell, just those incredible kisses they'd shared had told him that. He also knew better than to do more than flirt, tease, and wait_ because otherwise she will run._ He hadn't missed that moment of pure panic in her eyes when he'd lifted his glass in toast and told her, in one naked moment of truth he'd been somehow helpless to deny himself, that he loved her.

The most frustrating thing was that Raph, too, had started out as only the latest incarnation of the ASSR. Somehow when Marshall wasn't paying attention this one had become much more. Marshall had assumed he was safe because she'd so firmly rejected Raph's first proposal. He had, in fact, done his own private mental version of the Snoopy dance when Mary had told him about how firmly and rudely she'd rejected that first childishly put-together proposal After all, while he'd been somewhat concerned by the seriousness of Raph's apparent connection to Mary, he had had no _real_ doubts about what Mary felt for Raph. Mary was still on Marshall's couch at the end of most evenings drinking his beer with her feet in his lap, wasn't she? Wasn't Marshall still the one she called first with news, good, bad, angry, or trivial?

Marshall sat a few more minutes in his brood, but he eventually gave himself a strong mental shake, gathered the exhibition guide and his postcards, and stood. It was a still the same bright lovely day in Albuquerque, and he still had enough time to get out with his camera and try his hand at getting some shots if he went straight home and grabbed his gear. Days off didn't come very often, and he was going to make the most of this one. Before he left the museum, though, he went back to the shop one last time, and when he came out, his fingers were gently running over the sinuous shape of the silver panther pendant he'd removed from its small blue gift box inside his jacket pocket. Mary had a birthday coming up, and he'd decide closer to that time if she might accept it or if he'd just tuck it in that box he kept in the top of his closet full of things that made him think of her but that he hadn't quite found the courage to give.

Several hours later, Marshall had taken some photos he was optimistic about, and he was pleasantly tired and home contemplating what he was going to cook for dinner when Stan's call came about Margaret Finney. After confirming the travel arrangements, he methodically went through his house, shutting his computers down, packing up travel tech gear, watering plants, and generally preparing his house as he always did when he knew he might be gone for a long time. He pulled his packed travel bag out of the closet and called Mary to let her know he would pick her up. They fell into an easy and brief exchange of insults as he headed out the door to drive across town to pick her up, and he was smiling. _Going to see her soon...don't care how sad that makes me...some days, that's all it takes.... _Marshall turned the key in the ignition, the big engine kicked over, and his voice mixed with Jack White's through the lyrics of "Apple Blossom"... "Hey little apple blossom...what seems to be the problem...all the ones you tell your troubles to...they don't really care for you...come and tell me what you're thinking...cause just when the boat is sinking...a little light is blinking...and I will come and rescue you..."

One of the things Marshall prided himself on, one of the things that had saved his life and the lives of others numerous times in fact, was his ability to read situations based on subtle nuances, little details, the scraps and fragments others might overlook. The way a person shifted his body weight, the things she looked at or avoided looking at, the tone in his voice, or even the absence of a common object in her living space or the presence of a common object in an uncommon location were all things that might indicate something was amiss. Even a blind man could have interpreted that things were off in the Shannon household, though, as Marshall stepped through the door to pick up the go bag he knew from long experience would be waiting by the door.

Mary was standing with her weight resting easy on the balls of feet set hip-width apart. _Combat-stance, easy to move forward or back as needed, to attack or block. _Which was she having to do? Jinx and Brandi were nowhere to be seen. _As usual, it was Mary all alone against the world, no family to support her._ Her arms were crossed and her hands were gripping her forearms. _Doesn't anybody but me see how tense she is? _Raph was across the kitchen island from her, and the two of them were clearly in the middle of...something... Marshall felt his dislike for Raph crank up another notch. Why would Raph start something when he knew Mary was leaving? _This will just eat on her the whole time she's gone. Part of her will be back here with this ass trying to figure out a way to make the situation __better, trying to figure out some way to force herself into what he's asking her to be without destroying herself in the process.... _Marshall thought briefly of his trusted Glock and a quick and deeply satisfying resolution to this situation, but as he always did, he smoothed the rough edges off the ludicrous urge and simply looked at Mary.

She met his gaze immediately, and he could see the frustration and the anger boiling in her eyes. _So her day...not so good then. Damn. _ Damn Raph. Couldn't he see the effort she was making? This was a woman who didn't make these efforts ever for anybody, and here Mary was practically tying herself in knots. Every time Marshall saw that uncertain, angry, sad look in the eyes of this woman who always knew who she was and what she wanted, _he_ wanted to hit something, and hit it hard. _Not my fight,_ he told himself and because this somehow made him even more frustrated, he looked slowly away, taking up her bag and moving outside, and he forced himself to close the door as though it were made of eggshell porcelain rather than slamming it until it came off its hinges.

Mary came down the sidewalk a few minutes later, and Marshall watched her. She wasn't moving with the quick strides he expected, those indicative of anger. She'd opened the door with her body held regally, head up like a golden queen. The minute the door had closed, though, he'd watched her shoulders slump, her head lower, and he'd seen her wrap her hands around her elbows as if she were warding off a chill as she came down the short stretch of concrete to the vehicle. She was totally lost in thought as she slipped into the seat beside him, and he knew none of the paths her mind was walking were happy ones.

_What the hell happened after I left? What did he __**say**__ to her?_ The urge to unfasten his seatbelt, go back inside, and just...remove...Raph was strong. He kept his hands loose on the steering wheel as he fought for control. He saw Mary glance over at him and heard her reaching for her familiar snark as she ordered him to crank the vehicle. He allowed himself the release of tightening his hands on the wheel briefly, imagining fancifully that it was on all the things that were bothering his best friend and partner instead, and then he did as she asked. A tremendous wave of fatigue swept over him. She was right, of course; their day off, for better or worse, was over, there was a plane waiting at the airport, Margaret Finney needed them, and it was time to do their jobs.

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**A/N: Twists fingers nervously So? Whadja think? I'm nervous about Marshall....**

**"Apple Blossom" of course belongs to the divine Jack White and the White Stripes. You can find it on _De Stijl, _and if the desperate mood takes you, you can also listen to it on a site like Grooveshark while you read this story if you don't have the music yourself or are curious. There are several songs on the album that actually seem to fit Marshall and Mary to me, and you might find me toying with it again.**

**This is the last chapter before we get into the forward motion of time. There will be no more looping back into the past, I promise. Everybody has had his or her say now, so next chapter, you'll finally find out what's going on with Margaret Finney.**

**You cannot resist the pull of the green and white Review button. Don't try. :) Click and feel better.**


	5. The Amazing Bad Luck of Margaret Finney

**A/N: **

**Sorry about the delay with the update. "Gambate, Marshall" sort of took over for a couple of days, and I haven't been feeling very well. **

**Thanks to everyone who's been R&Ring both stories if I haven't gotten around to sending you a personal note. Your encouragement keeps my fingers flying across the keyboard. **

**Here, now, is Margaret Finney's story and how Mary and Marshall fit into it....**

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The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work. ~Harry Golden

Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel. ~Buffy Sainte-Marie

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Margaret Finney had been born luckless, or at least that had been the story her father had always loved to tell. Her huge, rough-handed Pop relished telling the story at every family gathering, every Christmas meal, every weekend trip to see the cousins. Margaret would duck her head and run her fingers over the pale, pale pink scar on her arm where, when the doctors had been rushing to save her life during her premature delivery, they had sliced her infant skin by accident.

The scar Margaret had on her arm was only the first of many. She seemed to be an accident magnet, always ungainly, always bumping into or tripping over something, and while her father jeered, her mother asked her pediatrician for advice while he was bandaging yet another set of stitches. The doctor studied Margaret's mother where she stood, calm, cool-looking, regal in her pink dress, and looked at Margaret. At eight, Margaret was already almost as tall as her mother. She'd have her father's height.

"Put her in ballet classes," was the doctor's recommendation. "It will improve her balance. She's going to be very tall, and she's gaining height faster than she's gaining coordination."

So to ballet Margaret went. She was the worst in the class for a time. More skinned knees, ruined pairs of tights, and tears followed. Eventually, though, the classes became easier, and Margaret looked forward to being able to step out of her awkward self and put on her ballet gear for those brief moments each week. Margaret danced, and as all little girls in such classes do, she dreamed dreams of toe shoes and prima ballerina roles. The night of her first recital, she danced with her class, did very well, enjoyed the applause with all the other girls, turned to leave the stage, and became tangled in a piece of the stage rigging that had been left out of place. She fell, and later, after she was in the hospital, those who were standing near her said they'd actually heard her leg snap.

Margaret was inconsolable with the loss of her ballet classes. There would be no dancing for at least eight weeks. Her father, of course, was full of misplaced humor, trying to make jokes in an effort to cheer her up. He couldn't understand why Margaret didn't see anything funny in her fall. She gritted her teeth, knowing that this would just be another addition to his collection of stories for the family gatherings.

Margaret's mother found her sitting in the window seat staring out at the lawn, hands idly turning a piece of ribbon over and over in her fingers. Her mother recognized the ribbon as one of the pieces of Margaret's recital costume, and her heart surged for the poor little girl. "Margaret, I have a surprise for you. You're going to be starting piano lessons tomorrow..." Margaret looked up at her dully, zero interest registering, and mumbled an agreement, not knowing that this was actually going to be the beginning of the greatest love affair of her whole life....

From the first lesson, Margaret loved the piano. She loved the dark wood of the instrument. She loved the way the music looked on the page, a language all of its own with patterns and intricacies she longed to be able to interpret. Most of all, she loved the way the actions of her hands could create beautiful sounds. As time went by, she spent increasing amounts of time at her practice, and her teacher told her mother that Margaret had a natural touch for the instrument. By the time she was in junior high, she was competing in state-wide festivals. By the time she was in high school, she was auditioning for prestigious music programs at national universities, many of which were pursuing her as ardently as if she were a hot athletic prospect instead of a quiet, slender pianist with flaming red hair.

Margaret chose the school of her dreams from those who were courting her and was accepted. It was a bit of good luck brought to her by her music, and it helped to counterbalance the other elements of more normal bad luck that followed her her senior year, the explosion in her chemistry lab that blew out a window, the freak lightning strike that felled a tree right onto her car, the skunk that crawled under the house right under her room and sprayed copiously.... When Margaret loaded up her new vehicle, paid for by the insurance her parents had bought as a matter of course for anything related to Margaret, and headed off to school, her parents waved and waved until she was out of sight, then looked at each other breathed a sigh of relief. Her father turned and looked at the house behind them. "It's still standing...."

Undergrad and grad school passed in a whirlwind of preparation for recitals, master classes, performances, and regular coursework. There were nights when Margaret wished for a mattress in the practice room so she could simply crawl off the piano bench and fall instantly. Faster than she could have imagined, she was at her graduation, holding her diploma and partying with her fellow music and music education majors. Margaret had managed to keep her bad luck mostly hidden from her friends. She'd taken herself to the student health center for stitches the time she'd cut her leg on the edge of a broken seat in the auditorium, and if she had gotten locked in a practice room one night because of a faulty door lock, well, that had given her lots of extra time to practice.

Margaret applied for and got a job with a fairly prestigious city symphony, and was happy to focus on further honing her craft. Time passed for her, and with the exception of her periodic trips to the hospital ER where they came to know her by name or calls to her landlord, or later, once she'd been able finally to afford a small place of her own, handyman whom she kept on speed dial, things were what she had always hoped they would be. She woke up the morning of her thirty-second birthday, looked around her light-drenched bedroom, and got up to greet the day with music, not knowing that the bad luck she'd been born to had a birthday gift of epic proportions for her.

Her friends took her out after their practice for Thai food, her favorite, at a downtown restaurant she'd never been to in celebration of her birthday. They ate, laughed, and talked late into the night. She was excited because the first cellist, David Bennett, had been sitting with her all night, and she was thinking that maybe, finally, something more than friendship might be blossoming. They'd been spending a lot of time together lately, even been out for coffee after rehearsals, but tonight, he was more attentive than usual, and their hands kept brushing as they reached for food on the family style table. When they all broke up to leave, David offered to walk her to her car. The others wished them a good night, and there were some teasing cat-calls and whistles that followed them down the street to where she'd parked.

When she'd arrived, there had been no spaces available near the restaurant, so she'd had to park a few streets over. David and she made small talk as they walked through the cool autumn night, and he reached out and took her hand. She looked at him and smiled. Just as they were about to reach her car, he stopped her under a street light and tucked a strand of her long red hair the wind had teased loose back behind her ear. His hand lingered, and he leaned in and kissed her, once, softly, gently. _This makes my birthday perfect,_ she thought. She wasn't really paying attention to the sound of feet approaching them on the sidewalk, the muttering of voices; she only saw David's face illuminated in the yellow glow of the street light. _Just perfect,_ she thought again, and the noise of a harsh laugh behind her made her spin around to see a group of young men, one of whom was pointing a gun right at her. She heard the two shots, but they sounded so distant, like a noise that had nothing to do with her. It was only when she felt the bullet rip into her that she began to understand. Margaret Finney's luck had caught up with her at last.

When Margaret was ushered into the WITSEC office, four months had passed since she'd been shot. David Bennett had already been buried, and for many of those long, agonizing days and weeks, her family believed that she was going to follow him. She had been in a coma following the best efforts of the trauma team to remove the slug and patch the damage of the shot to the chest that had almost ended her life on the scene. The entire time Margaret lay in her comatose state, her door was guarded by police. She was the only potential witness to a crime committed by a street gang whose members were growing bolder and bolder. In fact, they had been able to catch several of the young men present that night, but they needed Margaret, if she lived, to be able to ID the shooter. Her testimony could give them the leverage they needed.

When Margaret woke in the hospital, her family cried, the doctors breathed a sigh of relief and quietly congratulated themselves in the hallway, and an orderly slipped into the break room and made a quick phone call to an unlisted cellphone. Less than 24 hours later, while her parents were in the cafeteria and during a brief moment while the police on duty were changing shifts, a tall male in ill-fitting scrubs slipped into her room with a meal on a tray, pulled out a knife, and lunged at the bed. Margaret could only watch with terror filtering through the haze of drugs.

It seemed that sometimes bad luck worked for Margaret Finney, too, though, because the jello on the tray he carried wobbled, fell to the floor under his feet, and he slipped and fell, cursing. Before he could recover his footing, the police on duty seized him and dragged him away. He was charged for attempted murder, but he said nothing when questioned even in the face of such dangerous charges, and no firm connection could be made to the gang.

The U.S. Attorney appeared in Margaret's room the next day with two U.S. Marshals who took up positions, one on either side of her door. He spoke to her quietly and at length. He told her about the activities of the gang, and about their relentless tactics. He relayed the story of an entire family of a witness to one of their crimes who was burned alive in their house in order to pressure the witness not to testify. He calmly listed the people who had been shot, stabbed, or just simply disappeared before they could even agree to become witnesses. Tears leaked from Margaret's eyes and she simply stared out the window of her bleak room looking at the fading light of a winter day.

"Is there nothing I can do then?" she asked, the same feeling of hopelessness that had held her all those years ago as a broken ballerina encompassing her now.

The U.S. Attorney removed a clipboard with a stack of papers on it and laid it gently on her tray table. "Not nothing. There is always something, if you're willing to make a change...."

So when Margaret was better, she was sent to Albuquerque. She arrived in the office still looking so pale and weak that so triggered the protective instincts of everyone, Mary not excluded. The hardest part of her transition was giving up the piano.

"I...can't perform anymore, I know...but maybe I could still teach?" Her voice trailed off, and her fingers on the table did a slow dance.

"Not at anything like the level you're used to, Margaret. No university-level instruction. You'd just be too visible. You're known in those circles," said Marshall, gently.

"I....I...see. And, of course. I mean, I knew that. Of course. You're right." Her hands wilted and were still, lying on the table like broken birds. _There's nothing left for me, then...._ They could practically hear her thinking it, and while all the witnesses who had ever sat in these chairs had probably thought those words in some form or another, there was something about this fragile, rail-thin woman sitting before them that was heartbreaking. Perhaps it was her utter lack of drama. She demanded nothing from them. She seemed to expect to receive nothing from anyone anymore.

Mary looked at Marshall, and he made a little shooing motion with his hand. Margaret was her witness after all. Mary rolled her eyes. Marshall was so much better when the delicate touch was needed, and the woman in front of her could have been made from spun glass....

"Margaret, we can't allow you to teach at a university, but it's possible that you could teach private lessons in your home or possibly at one of the local high schools. I think you would be below the radar there. Would something like that appeal to you? If not, then we can go in a completely different direction..."

The sudden look of hope on the woman's face was like light coming through the clouds. It changed her. Her hands lifted, fluttered. "Really? I could...keep the music?"

"Yeah, in some form. As long as you're not doing public performances like would be required of you as a faculty member of a university music program, I think it should be okay."

Tears welled up, and Mary looked at Marshall with panic in her eyes. _Not a crier. Please not a crier. _Marshall reached for the box of tissues they kept in the conference room for just such emergencies and offered them to Margaret. She waved them away.

"Is that not good, Margaret?" Mary asked uneasily.

"No. You don't understand. They took David. They took my family, my home, my career.... They don't get to take the music."

Margaret was settled into a small bungalow in a quiet neighborhood, and with Mary's help, she got a job teaching piano classes at an elementary school. She loved it more than she ever could have imagined. Watching the little ones discover the piano for the first time was a joy, even when they didn't practice enough, even when the notes they hit were more noise than melody. She started to settle in and make friends. She started to relax somewhat. Mary and Marshall came by to see her once every two weeks just to check up on her, but she was so very low-maintenance a witness that those sessions were more like friendly calls than professional obligations for them most part once the necessary bits were done. She felt safe and happy in this new environment. Everything was going fine until that faithful night when she and some of her teacher friends went to the KiMo to see a concert and she ran into one of her old friends from back home. Luck had found her again.

Her fearless Marshals had packed a bag and whisked her away to the airport. She mourned the loss of her sheet music the most. She'd managed to repurchase quite a few of her favorite pieces in the time she had been living in Albuquerque. One or two of them had been thoughtful gifts from Mary or Marshall themselves. She suspected that Marshall had actually picked them out, but, well, it was the thought counted.... Now everything was going to be taken away again because of one freak bad luck moment. She was even going to lose Mary and Marshall, and she'd felt safer with them than she had with anyone else since David had died. She said goodbye to them at the airport as they turned her over to two new Marshals, a two new men she'd have to get to know, and she impulsively turned and pulled them both into a hug. Marshall hugged her back; Mary hesitated just that minute before doing the same, just as she knew both of them would. As she was turning to go, Marshall handed Mary a cheap messenger bag, and Mary caught Margaret's arm.

"We thought you might want this to have as a carry-on." Mary handed Margaret the bag.

Margaret looked at the bag in confusion and pulled back the top flap. Inside was her small cache of sheet music, what she thought she'd had to abandon yet again in her hasty flight from the little house. She looked up with a smile and tears.

"Because they can't take the music, Margaret. Don't forget that," said Mary, and she squeezed her arm tightly. Marshall nodded, and then the two of them were stepping back to scan the area as Margaret's two new Marshals ushered her down the passageway to the plane, to a new city, to whatever was coming next for her. _I can face it_, she thought, _I've got everything I need right here...._

Six months had passed since then. The time for her testify was almost at hand. She was going back and forth from the courthouse to her new little dwelling in this still-strange city, and her two new Marshals were slowly becoming more friendly, but they weren't like Mary and Marshall. She missed the way the two of them worked as a team, the way they shot sarcastic jokes back and forth to one another. Her new Marshals were very stiff, very stilted, even with one another, and they didn't seem to have that natural communication that flowed back and forth between Mary and Marshall so easily. _You can't expect everybody to be the same. I'm sure they're very good at their jobs. Not everybody is going to come sit on your porch and listen to you play. Quit being silly about this. _That lack of communication, however, was going to be a huge problem for everyone when her bad luck returned....

No one was ever sure how the gang tracked her in this new city. Most likely they were watching the courthouse. Her Marshals were in the process of herding her out the back door from a meeting with the U.S. Attorney one minute, and the next, she was hearing the heart-stoppingly familiar sound of gunfire and being shoved down flat on the pavement with a heavy weight falling on top of her. One of her new Marshals had been shot, not a killing wound, but enough to put him out of commission for several weeks, one of the bullets somehow miraculously ricocheting off a dumpster in the back alley and striking him. His partner had been out of pocket just long enough, their rhythm just off enough, to open the needed window for the gang to attack. _I know just how that happened,_ Margaret sighed. Her luck was active again, it seemed.

She was sitting in a private treatment room having the cut on her forehead from the fall against the pavement cleaned when the U.S. Attorney came in, two new Marshals trailing him. These, apparently, were the new fodder for her luck to devour. Margaret raised her hand. "No," she said.

"I'm sorry. What?"

"I said no."

"No, what? Are you saying you won't testify? Because it's a little late at this date to be making that kind of decision..."

She cut him off with another gesture. "Nothing of the kind. And you should know better."

The U.S. Attorney subsided somewhat. "Then, to what, may I ask, are you objecting?"

"Them," she said looking pointedly over his shoulder to where the two new Marshals were standing guard at the door. He followed her gaze.

"You must have protection. That is not an option. If you're feeling guilty because Marshal Jones was injured in the line of duty, then let me reassure you...."

Margaret gave him her best teacher stare. It was something she had perfected in her brief time in Albuquerque. "Why do you continue to assume you know what I'm feeling or thinking? It's insulting." She really did not like this man. He was not like the person who had met her after her shooting. _Perhaps his skills as a Federal prosecutor somehow make up for his lack of people skills_, she mused.

"Okay. Why don't you tell me what it is you want then, Ms. Finney?"

Ten minutes later, Stan's phone was ringing. Twenty minutes after that, Mary and Marshall were both packing for an extended trip protecting Margaret Finney until such time as she could give her testimony. When the U.S. Attorney hung up his cell, looked at her, and gave a tight nod, she felt the first feeling of relief she'd had in months. In all the time she'd been in Albuquerque, not once had her luck ever reached out to grab at Mary and Marshall. Surely, they would be safe....

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**What do you think of Margaret Finney?**


	6. Inflight Entertainment

**A/N: Lookit! Time moves forward in a linear fashion in one of my chapters! How novel.... :)**

**Thanks to everyone who R&R'd for Margaret's chapter. I enjoyed creating her. Don't worry; you'll be seeing more of her later. For a little while, though, back to everyone's favorite pair....

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_In union there is strength. ~Aesop _

_If you're alone, I'll be your shadow. If you want to cry, I'll be your shoulder. If you want a hug, I'll be your pillow. If you need to be happy, I'll be your smile. But anytime you need a friend, I'll just be me. ~Author Unknown

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During the drive to the airport, Mary fiddled with the radio, finally settling on a classic rock station and turning the music up to a deafening level while Marshall navigated the interstate traffic significantly faster than usual. She pretended not to notice, and for once, there was not even a smart comment from the passenger seat. They used separate check-in windows and not long after they arrived at their gate boarding began.

When they reached their seats, Marshall held his hand out for Mary's bag without even looking behind him. Mary handed it over almost as reflexively after digging one of the paperbacks she'd brought from home out of her bag. Marshall automatically stepped back to allow Mary to take the window seat even though it had been assigned to him on his boarding pass and, once he was seated, reached up to turn off the blower vent that was angled at her seat. Mary pushed up the arm between their seats, fastened her seatbelt, and flopped the paperback into Marshall's lap. Marshall flagged the flight attendant and got himself a bottle of water and Mary a soda. He also surreptitiously grabbed an extra cookie from the selection they were offered, earning an indulgent smile from the flight attendant, and palmed it so when Mary stole his "regular" cookie from the napkin in front of him moments later, he was able to pull the the extra out and wave it in front of her tauntingly.

Finally, all the actions that could be made to fill the emptiness between them had been exhausted and they were left with each other and the same pressing silence that had hung there since she'd walked out of her door, head down, shoulders slumped. Mary was staring absently out the window watching the ground crew finish their last-minute preparations in the twilight. Marshall checked his email one last time, sent a text to his sister in response to her message, and shut his phone off with the announcement that the cabin doors were being shut. He slid his phone into his jacket pocket and turned to look at Mary.

"So are you going to tell me what I walked in on, or are you going to just let me continue to play Mad Libs with it in my head?"

A small smile traced across Mary's lips, but she continued to look out the window. Then she sighed. The plane lurched as it began to move backwards, preparing to taxi, then take off.

"I'm fairly sure that whatever you're filling those blanks in with is a hell of a lot more interesting than the real thing, Marshall." She rubbed the thumb of her left hand slowly over the base of her bare fourth finger. Marshall knew she wasn't aware of the gesture. It was one he often saw her make whenever she talked about Raph.... _Whenever she's having second thoughts about things...._

"Well what I saw was such an almighty barrel of laughs that I'd have a hard time topping it...Mare, look at me."

The plane had turned and an announcement that they were second in line for take-off vaguely registered in the background. Mary looked away from the darkened window, away from the lights of the runway, away from Albuquerque and the house where her day had gone to hell despite her best efforts to the contrary. When she met Marshall's eyes, he could see weariness in hers. _Not just weary, bone-deep tired. Like she could sleep for a hundred years. Too tired to even hide behind the angry anymore._

She was struggling for the angry, though, out of habit, like a newborn kitten clawing at a hand trying to lift it from danger. "Look, it was just a bad day, alright? Sometimes that's just the way the ball bounces. The way the cookie crumbles. The way the shit hits the goddamn fan. I do not want to play psychiatry session all the way to guard Margaret. I do not want to play twenty fucking questions. I do not want to play What Is Mary's Problem Today."

Marshall remained silent, continued to look at her. He'd learned long ago that it was more effective to be still when she got this way and let her decide what she really wanted. She would talk or not as she chose, and if she was pushed, she would just push away in the opposite direction. Mary fidgeted the end of the lapbelt through her fingers, stared down at it, worrying a string that had come loose from the stitching. The plane surged forward into its runway charge. When she spoke a few moments later, her voice was low and the fire had subsided, the weariness re-emerged.

"He told me I treat him like a pet dog."

Marshall was incredulous. "He said _what_ now?"

"I believe his actual words were, 'Sit, stay, good dog.'"

"Mary, that's ridiculous...."

She cut him off. "He said I don't trust him because I won't tell him anything about where I'm going or even how long I'm going to be gone. He said I shut him out of my life, and that I'm just 'playing house' with him, that I'm not serious about this marriage...." She looked up at Marshall, and he saw what she would not show the rest of the world, the panicky trapped incomprehension of a wounded animal in her eyes. "Playing house, like we're damn Barbie and Ken dolls."

Marshall wished savagely, violently that he had taken the opportunity to go back in the house earlier and use his combat training and knowledge of human anatomy to break the small bones in Raph's hands one-by-one, slowly, methodically, while he looked him in the eyes....

"What more does he want, Marshall? What more can I give him? It's like this every single time now. Every single witness, every single trip. I thought when I told him about WITSEC he would understand at last. I thought he'd get it. I mean, Jesus, Marshall...he acts like my breaking top secret government clearance to tell him about my job was a trivial thing...."

Of that, Marshall was all too-well-aware. The sting of Mary revealing the true nature of their job to Raphael had not faded. He knew it was small of him, but he felt that something intimate between the two of them had been exposed to callous eyes, and he couldn't recover from it. While he had understood Mary's rationale at the time, understood that she was desperately trying to honor the commitment she'd made, understood in a way that apparently Raph could not that to her marriage was an issue of supreme sacrifice for her, he still felt somehow violated every time he saw Raphael. Worse still, he knew that Mary had offered Raph something of herself rare and important, precious to her in a vital way, a portion of what made her who she was, only to have her fiance discard it like a fluffy afterthought. _Maybe not the bones of his hands. Maybe the long bones in the arms and legs would be more satisfying._

"I just don't know what's ever going to be enough for him. He just keeps asking for more and more," her voice was growing irritated, and she shifted her gaze out the window again. "He actually said that when we get married there will be no him, no me anymore, just _us_ like we're going to turn into some kind of freakin' creature from a bad science fiction B-picture. I kept seeing something like the Blob only with both our heads..." She shuddered, and it wasn't faked, wasn't for comic effect, her voice trailing off.

All around them, others were sleeping, reading, listening to music. The two of them were isolated within their tiny two-person island of conversation. Marshall was silent another moment, waiting to see if there was more she needed to purge. When she didn't continue, he took a deep quiet breath and asked her the question that had been plaguing him so frequently, knowing that as he did so he was stepping into dangerous territory. "Mare...why are you putting up with this crap? Why are you marrying this guy?"

She didn't turn and shred him into a million tiny pieces, which was always a win. She didn't even take offense. Instead, she turned and blinked at him, surprised at the question as if nobody had ever asked it of her before, as if he had suddenly appeared naked on the seat beside her. "Because...well, because he's basically a good, decent man, Marshall. He's sweet and generous and committed to me...and...and...he can handle Jinx and Brandi and the hellish freakshow that is my family life..." Marshall chose not to remind her of exactly what kind of handling of Brandi she'd thought Raph capable of on more than one occasion.... "and most of the time, the two of us have a good time together." Her voice got stronger at the end, sounded more confident. Marshall fleetingly prayed that no woman he ever hoped to marry ever described him to anyone in the lackluster terms she just used, but he couldn't stop the helpless little flutter of joy in his heart that at no point in her list had she used anything approaching love as a reason.

"When I left, I told him that we'd talk when I got back. That maybe the trust issue wasn't on my side at all. Shit. I guess I'll have that to look forward to when we get home," she yawned on the last words, and she leaned against Marshall's shoulder, her standard pillow on all stakeouts, car trips where one of them was not driving, and flights.

Marshall put off thoughts of the uncertain future for whatever pleasures he could take in the here and now. He slid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her more comfortably into the crook of his arm, smelling the soft clean fragrance of her no-fuss shampoo as she turned to settle against him.

"Cheer up, partner. This is Margaret we're talking about. There's always the chance that we won't make it home at all," Marshall said, humor in his voice.

She snorted in sleepy amusement and slapped at his chest with an open palm. "Optimist," she murmured and wiggled a little against him, asleep moments later, unaware of Marshall's hand gently rubbing her shoulder in small, slow, soothing circles.

*****

They were met at the gate by a Marshal from the office responsible for Margaret's current protection. He was a dour, humorless man who seemed to be irritated just by having to be there to get them despite the fact that their plane had landed on time. Mary and Marshall had introduced themselves with the proper protocol, but all he'd done was scan their badges, look them up and down, give his name briefly as "Thompson," and then turn to walk towards an escalator leading toward the airport exits.

Marshall nudged her with an elbow and said in a stage whisper, "I think he likes us."

Mary laughed a little, and replied in the same tone, "Oh, and I can just feel that it's going to be mutual..."

Thompson didn't even stir except for a brief tightening of his shoulders. He stayed four paces ahead of them the entire way through the airport, and when he reached the black SUV that would take them to the local WITSEC office, he didn't even pause before climbing in the front seat next to a driver and slamming the door shut behind him.

Mary and Marshall just looked at each other in shock over the unprofessional rudeness being displayed by their fellow Marshal.

"And just what do you think _his_ particular fucking problem is?" said Mary in tones that were even, civil, sweet, and deceptively pleasant. Men had screamed in agony and wished for death soon after such dulcet tones had issued from this particular U.S. Marshal.

Marshall laughed. "If I had to make a guess...I'd say that he is probably one of the Marshals that Margaret rejected, and he's taking the breakup badly."

"Ah, so we're the buff out-of-town ex who understands her, and he's all jealous?"

"Yeah. Something like that."

"What an asshole."

They reached the SUV which was already idling. Marshall swept into an ornate bow complete with a flourish of his hand and opened the door to the backseat. "After you, milady Marshal." Mary eyed him for a second, dropped her bag on the sidewalk next to his own and made a surprisingly graceful and exaggerated curtsy before climbing in. "Thank you, kind sir."

Marshall took both bags to the back of the vehicle and stowed them before returning to the seat. He wasn't even properly settled in the seat before the driver roughly accelerated away from the curb and he was thrown into Mary on the bench seat. She looked at him for a moment, bared her teeth in that not-smile of hers, and turned her attention on the man behind the wheel, preparing to rip him into small pieces for his behavior. Marshall just sank back on the seat, fastened his seatbelt, and thought, "_God, this is going to be a long, long, trip if everybody here feels this way..."_

They were relieved to find that not everyone seemed to feel the same naked animosity toward the out-of-town arrivals. They met the person in charge of this office after being rather unceremoniously dumped at the regional headquarters by the two Mary had dubbed "Tweedledee and Tweedledum," and Will Jordan had been apologizing almost from the first handshake for the behavior of his two Marshals.

"...You see, they just didn't take it well when they weren't even given the chance to protect Ms. Finney. They felt like she was saying they weren't good enough to do the job. I've tried every way I know how to explain that Ms. Finney's case is a little unusual what with that business of running into her friend in ABQ, and so forth, but Thompson and Baum are both young and a little hotheaded," he laughed a friendly, rueful chuckle.

Mary was less than amused, and she leaned over the table as she spoke. "We don't want to waste time with a pissing contest. We have a witness in a critical situation to protect. That's the only reason we're here." She paused a beat, cocked her head and narrowed her eyes consideringly. "Besides, your guys would lose and have to feel even worse about themselves afterward."

Jordan's smile did not dim. "Right to the point, aren't you. Stan warned me about that side of you. I can respect that. Don't worry, Marshal Shannon. I can keep Thompson and Baum in line. Just tell me what you're going to need to keep your witness safe."

The next few hours passed in a blur of technical schematics of the courthouse, of Margaret's new hiding place, of every slice of information that the two Marshals needed to ensure Margaret's safety. Maps, blueprints, traffic pattern information, names and photos of every person who had anything to do with the case were passed to Marshall who began to process the information in his systematic manner while Mary talked with Jordan about the immediate threats, known issues, and the following day's schedule. Eventually, the two felt they had enough information to begin their duties, and they left for their hotel. They would meet Margaret in the morning, pick her up from the two Marshals who were currently watching her, and from that point forward, Margaret's safety would be entrusted to them.

At the hotel, Marshall dealt with the check-in while Mary walked around the lobby. He resolved the paperwork, picked up the keys, and turned to find her in front of the large backlit advertisement of a bride, smiling and radiant, being carried in the strong arms of a model-perfect groom while rice showered down on them. The ad was for the hotel's banquet and reception planning service, and was one of a series hanging along the wall near the elevators, but Mary was staring at it as if transfixed. As he crossed the lobby, he could see her thumb rubbing, rubbing, rubbing her finger. _She really doesn't know she does that. She'd be horrified to know she has such a noticeable tell...._

Marshall paused beside her and said softly, "The tradition of throwing rice or some form of grain at married couples has been found in records dating all the way back to Ancient Rome and Egypt. It's a symbol of hope that the couple will be prosperous and fertile. I kind of prefer some of the traditions from other cultures for fun, though...." She pulled her eyes away from the advertisement to look him, her eyes still lost, somehow pleading, her thumb still circling.

Marshall continued, voice stronger now, "Some cultures throw eggs for new life, and according to a really old Irish tradition, the wedding guests even get to throw pots and pans to celebrate the new domestic life the couple is starting." He smiled down at her and crooked an eyebrow, relieved to see life returning to her, amusement sparkling instead of panic and sadness.

Her hand had stopped its habitual gesture and she laughed. "Don't get any bright ideas about reviving any ancient customs, buster. I had better not see the first egg or pan at mine unless it's a caterer making an omelet."

"No promises. Tradition is tradition after all, and I've got to do something to keep things interesting."

"Yeah," she said, rolling her eyes. "God knows what I'd do with out you keeping things interesting."

Y_eah, _thought Marshall, that painful dual-edged blade of happiness and despair lancing through him,_ God only __knows....

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_**As always, I value your feedback. Let me know what you think. The green button awaits you.**  
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	7. Wounded

**A/N: **

**Sorry for the delay in updates. I've been a little sick and a LOT busy lately getting stuff going with my "day job." :) Hopefully, I will be updating here more quickly now, though. Isn't it sad when real life interrupts writing?**

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Things are never so bad they can't be made worse. ~From the movie The African Queen  
Problems are messages. ~Shakti Gawain

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Mary and Marshall's rooms adjoined, and since there was still much planning to do, they opened the door between them. Mary got the phone book out of the desk drawer and ordered two pizzas (_because I know how much Marshall eats and I'm pretty hungry myself)_ while Marshall was sent on a run downstairs to the lobby convenience store for beverages and other junk food. Her demands were specific, her favorite type of soda since it was too late to sit around drinking when other duties called them tomorrow, and....

"...if you come back without something chocolate, I will shoot you where you stand."

"When, may I ask, have I ever failed to provide? Besides, you're meaner than usual when there is no chocolate, so it's in my best interest to procure some, don't worry."

"Damn straight, numbnuts. Now go. Hunt. Gather."

She had deliberately mixed the two together, and she could tell that he was torn between going to get the food and staying to launch into a trivia session about the difference between hunting and gathering, between caveman tribes in New Guinea or some such random thing, and it was sort of fascinating to see which primal urge was going to win out. Apparently, he was extremely hungry, because he left muttering something under his breath about mixing images and traditional roles.

"Score one for the home team," she said with a little smirk after the door closed. She turned to her travel bag and began unpacking the items she'd need for the night. Her own personal alarm clock went on the nightstand, and she corrected it for the new timezone they were in before setting the alarm and switching it on. She took her toiletries kit and sat it on the bathroom counter. She took the files she and Marshall would need tonight and laid them on the small table near the windows so they could begin after they ate, and she'd just sat down on the bed to for a moment of rest when her BlackBerry rang.

She slipped it out of holster at her waist and looked at the screen for a moment. She felt her stomach tie into a million elaborate knots. _Shit. __Of course. __The last person in all the world I want to talk to right now. Raph._

She considered just letting it go to voice mail. That however was the coward's way out, and Mary Shannon was never a coward. Besides, the way her family operated, who knew what news he was calling with. It was perfectly possible he was calling to tell her Brandi had joined a cult. That Jinx had been abducted by aliens. That either one of them had stolen a baby-blue Cadillac convertible and taken off to Vegas with a penniless Elvis impersonator for an impromptu wedding ceremony. She sighed and gingerly pressed the call answer button.

"What's wrong Raph?"

"Mary? What do you mean, 'What's wrong?' Do you always answer the phone like this? I can't just call my own fiance?"

"What? Raph...everything at home is okay then? There's no FBI tearing more holes in the walls, nobody's been arrested or maimed or anything?"

Irritation laced Raph's voice. "Don't be too disappointed about it, but we've all managed to avoid the hospitals and the jails in your absence, Mary."

"Raph, look.... it's late. I'm tired. You know I'm on a case...." She was vaguely aware of the door to Marshall's room opening and closing, of his moving around in his space and the smell of pizza. She was pacing the floor back and forth in her own like a caged thing, moving from the table by the windows to the door of the room over and over.

"Oh, I am very aware you are on a _case_. As if I could forget that you are away on a _case_. Not that I can be told where. Not that I can be told why. Not that I, the man you are going to marry, can even be told how long you're going to be gone...." His voice was rising.

"Stop it, Raph. I told you that we are not going to do this tonight. If wasn't going to do it standing there in the kitchen at home, I sure as hell am not going to do it over the goddamn phone."

"It's always on _your_ timetable, isn't it? Everything is under your control, has to be your way. Mary Shannon, Holy and Perfect Queen of Everything." Mary could hear a distinct clink of glass on glass, one she knew all too well. That was the sound of a bottleneck connecting with the type of glass from which one drank hard liquor. Her anger iced immediately, shot right through with sickness and unease. Her prowl slowed and she plowed one hand through her hair.

"Raph...shit...how much have you had to drink? Are you there alone?" She could hear it in his voice now. She was amazed that she hadn't noticed it before. Raph didn't drink to excess very often, and that he was doing so tonight....

His voice when he replied was dangerous. "Don't talk to me like I'm your mother, Mary. Yes, I'm drinking." He paused to take a deliberately noisy sip. "In fact," another sip, "I'm fairly sure I'm on my way to being completely and conspicuously drunk. However, this does not mean I do not know what I'm talking about."

"Raph, yeah, I'm sure you do... but is Brandi there by any chance? Can you just put her on the phone, just for a minute?" _If I can just talk to Squish for a minute, I can get her to watch him, make sure he doesn't do anything stupid...._

"_Listen to me. _Quit trying to run it all. You walked out tonight when you should have stayed. Fixing what was wrong with us should have been more important to you than some stranger in another state, than some job. You turned around and you left. So yeah. I'm drinking tonight, Mary. I'm sorry if that doesn't quite live up to your standards."

Mary had stopped pacing altogether and sat down on the side of the bed. She felt a headache of epic proportions coming on and her hand rubbed hard across her forehead.

"I'm getting off the phone now, Raph, because there is nothing else I can say to you tonight. You're angry and you're drunk, and I'm not going to try to talk you down from it. I've explained in every way I know how other than by using sign language, semaphore, or shadow puppets that I cannot share anything more about my job than what I've already told you. Now, I have to get back to work. Do not call me again while you are drinking, Raph. I don't know what else about tonight you're going to remember, but God help you, you'd better fucking remember that."

She hung the BlackBerry up and stared at it for a moment, trying to remember why it would be a very bad thing to hurl the tiny fragile piece of electronics across the room. Her head was pounding like someone with a 40-lb sledge had taken up residence inside and was tearing out walls with gleeful abandon. Placing the phone on the bedside table, she simply leaned forward until her forehead touched her knees, pressing her fingers to her temples as hard as she could in what looked like an effort to squeeze the pain right out of her head.

She was unsure how long she stayed like that. Her normally acute awareness of her environment was blotted out by the pain of the headache and by the emotional fury she was feeling.

_How dare he? How DARE he! He called me up to tell me what? That he was still pissed? Not that he was sorry. Not that he wanted us to make up. But that everything was still my fault and that he was drunk and THAT'S my fault too, somehow. I am so tired of this. So tired of fighting the same battles over and over._

She was vaguely aware of a click, and suddenly the bright lights weren't causing her pain anymore. The bed dipped beside her as someone sat down. _Marshall. Oh my God. Marshall came back in the middle of that shit storm. What did he hear? _Her aching brain slowly managed to reconstruct the timeline for the conversation...._More than enough. He heard more than enough..._

_Oh, please, Marshall. I do not want to analyze this right now. If you pull the end of this thread, I will just come all unraveled, all the little patches and odds and ends will come unstitched. _She did not raise her head from her knees; she did not move.

She felt the bed shift again, and she felt Marshall place his hand on the back of her neck, lightly. She turned her head, quick, sharp, and the pain it caused her to do so made her lips pull back from her teeth like a feral thing. The message was clear: Do Not Touch.

Marshall was undeterred. He did not remove his hand. He left it there, that same light, undemanding touch, and he looked at her, his eyes completely unreadable in the light filtering in from the bathroom behind him. Then his hand was gone. His weight lifted from the bed, and she heard him moving away, back to his room. She was filled with an unreasoning sense of grief at his leaving. _But I didn't want him here, did I? I can't think straight...Damn Raph...._Her thoughts whirled and the pain in her head increased.

Time had ceased to have any meaning for her, so it could have been hours or minutes, but she became aware that the bed moved again. _Marshall? I didn't make you run away?_ He laughed, and she realized that in her pain she had spoken the words aloud.

"Take more than that, Mare. Now sit up for me like a good girl and take these."

_Think I should probably get mad about that. Yeah, should get mad about that...gonna get mad later. Marshall, remind me to kick your ass for that later...._

"I will happily remind you to be mad as a wet hen later if you will just take these little pills for me....thank you....and now I'm going to help you lay down...."

Marshall helped her lay face down on the bed, and it felt so good to be on the flat surface that she whimpered once. He knelt beside her on the bed, and she felt him push her long hair out of the way gently. Then she felt his hand on her neck again, just a soft pressure, his hand not moving at all, just resting, as if he were letting her get used to it being there.

"Mare," he said in a voice as gentle as his hand, "I'm going to try to get out some of the tension and see if that will ease some of the pain, okay?"

_'Kay, Marshall. Just don't hurt me. It already hurts so much tonight...._

Her pain-slurred words cut into him like surgical scalpels, peeling back the exterior to expose the beating heart inside. He'd seen her, once or twice, driven past the point of endurance by fatigue, worry, emotional distress, or some combination of the three, like this before, deep in the clutches of this migraine-like headache. As far as he knew, she'd never seen a doctor about it, and the last thing he'd ever do would be to suggest that she might. He wasn't quite that naive.

Her growing docility under his care told him something about her state right away. That she'd allowed him to bring her the over-the-counter migraine pills that he always carried (not for himself as he rarely had headaches) without giving him snark or hassle about not wanting to take them meant she was already very ill. The way she was just sitting in a slumped heap on the bed also broke his heart, too. When he'd come in, she'd been on the phone, and she'd been his confident kick-ass partner, the stalking panther who'd inspired him to buy the silver necklace at the museum, beautiful, mesmerizing to behold even when she was most dangerous. He'd felt briefly amused and sorry for whoever happened to have the poor luck to be her current target. Then he'd heard the rest of that conversation play out, seen her crumble, and wanted more than anything just for a moment, to gather her in his arms and kiss her.

_How do you hold a panther, though? Simple answer: you don't. Sometimes, though, they might let you stroke them....._

He brought both his hands to her neck, and he began to work her muscles. _Gordian knots,_ he thought. His mind, that bottomless well of trivia, pulled forth the story of the ancient king and his puzzle, of Alexander who solved it and won for himself a kingdom in the process. _I'd tell the story to Mary, but she's too far gone to care now. I'll save it for her for later. She'll like the bit about the sword being the answer. It's the kind of thing she would do. _He wished he had an answer as quick and as final for the problems Mary faced. _I'm no Alexander the Great, though..._

Marshall used his thumbs, fingertips, and the heels of his hands to knead her taut back. She made little noises of pain sometimes when he hit a place that was particularly tense, but he did not stop the steady motion. Gradually, the bow-string tension of her body loosened, and he began to use gentle, calming strokes instead of the deeper, harder work designed to force her to relax. He started where her spine joined her skull and he cradled it gently in his hands. His long fingers circled on her scalp, squeezing softly. Mary murmured something wordless, something peaceful, a purr, and flexed her hands gently against the bedspread, and he moved to her shoulders again, slow, soft, and soothing.

Unlike Alexander, he'd taken to time to undo the impossible tangle before him bit by bit, and when she lay almost asleep, he shifted to leave her. He felt her hand clutch at his wrist as he moved to slip away.

"Don't go."

He lay down beside her on his side, and his panther-partner slipped her hand down to tangle her fingers together with his seeking the comfort of continued contact. He heard her breathing even out and slow down, and he knew that she had finally escaped the impossibly long day into a world of dreams. He closed his own eyes to try to get some rest. He thought fleetingly of the food cooling in the other room, the details of the case that needed final work. Everything else would have to wait, he decided, at least until the morning. They would fix whatever was still broken in the morning. It was a long time, however, before he was able to sleep, aware as he was of the minute movements of her hand in his.

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**Hope you liked it. More to come soon.... Let me know what you think.**


	8. Revelation

**A/N: **

**Thank you for the lovely feedback to the last chapter and to "When in Vegas," too, since lots of you are reading both. Yeah, that Raph. What a jerk. I hope this will satisfy and soothe some of you. When you get to the end, let me know if you feel...um...soothed.... (Oh, and just to be safe, I think I'd better say that the rating for this chapter might had better kick up to a T+ if there is any such thing. I don't think it's strong enough to warrant an M....) Oh yeah, and because I always forget to say it lately, not mine.**

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How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said. ~Victor Hugo

Her lips on his could tell him better than all her stumbling words. ~Margaret Mitchell

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Mary woke up suddenly. She wasn't sure what had awakened her. It wasn't the alarm. The room was still dark except for the dim light from the bathroom. She waited, senses alert for the thing that had jarred her, and suddenly she heard it again, down the hall, loud drunken laughter, the sound of partying people trying to get into their room without much coordination or luck. She relaxed. _Not my problem, then._

As she turned her mind from immediate threats, she became aware of other things. First, her headache was gone. Whatever the pills Marshall had given her were and the sleep she'd gotten had done away with it completely. She said a silent prayer of relief. The second thing she became aware of was that she was sleeping curled into Marshall and that he had his arm wrapped around her, holding her close. Her head lay on his shoulder, and one of her arms was wrapped around his waist. She, the woman who never let even the most passionate of her lovers hold her after even the most intimate of acts, was snuggled into her partner as though he were the only source of warmth in a freezing room.

_When did this happen? And why am I so very comfortable? And why does this feel so...nice? _She shifted against him slightly, and his hand slid down her back, holding her closer. Was he awake? She looked up, alarmed, only to see his face shift, frowning in his sleep but still dreaming. She studied him in the soft illumination, the contours and planes of his strong profile. She thought about the night before and how gentle he'd been with her, the feel of his hands firmly yet tenderly easing the pain out of her body despite her reluctance to let him help her. _He's always that way, too. He's always there with whatever I need whenever I need it whether it's silliness or serious support. He never pushes, never demands. Hell, he had those pills in his stuff. Why did he even have them? I've never seen him with a headache, not even once. _

_Why doesn't Raph take care of me like Marshall, understand me like Marshall does? Marshall never gets hurt when I am bitchy, never runs away when I'm mad, never backs down when I need somebody to hold his ground....He was going out to get me chocolate last night before...before... _She looked at the familiar face so close to her own as if she were seeing it for the first time. Without conscious thought, her hand on his back tightened into a closed fist, holding part of his shirt in it.

That motion was enough to wake Marshall. His eyes were instantly open, and his hand on her back spread and firmed instinctively, a protective gesture, even while his mind tried to shake off the remnants of dreams that had been troubling, dreams of Mary in a white dress tumbling into an endless darkness, Mary kneeling before Raph who was not Raph at all but a monster that nobody but Marshall seemed to be able to see clearly and offering him the still-beating heart she'd just cut from her chest on an ornate silver platter....

"Mary, what is it? What's wrong?" he asked in a soft voice still husky with sleep.

Still looking at him with her newfound perception, Mary shook her head. "'S nothing. Everything's okay, Marshall. Go on back to sleep." She was suddenly exceptionally aware of how close his mouth was to her own, how very blue his eyes were, even in this lighting.

He studied her for a moment, and something changed in those eyes, sleep left and something hot and needy crept in. She could see his pupils react as he looked into her eyes. She shifted against him again, involuntarily responding to it. She gazed down at his mouth and thought of those kisses they'd shared under duress before, those kisses she'd put so firmly out of her mind. The hand she had clutched on his back slowly fell open, slowly traced a circle with the tips of the fingers.

She heard the hitch in his breath, and her eyes flew back to his. _Yeah, hot and blue, like the flame of a welding torch...and God help me, I think it's about time I see what it feels like to get burned...._ Slowly, slowly, so as to give him time to move away if he wanted to, she closed the small distance between them and pressed her mouth to his. At the contact, a shudder went through him, and his hand moved up her back, but he stayed still otherwise and allowed her to kiss him. Mary tasted his lips gently, thoroughly, and pulled back just a little from him to gauge his reaction.

Every muscle in his body was tense. His eyes were closed and it looked at though he was being tortured rather than being kissed. He had an expression on his face of near agony, and she could hardly contain her surprise. _Well, there goes MY self-confidence.... He really must not have wanted to kiss me. Oh, hell. How do I clean this up? But I was so sure, and it surely feels like he wants to kiss me...the body does not lie..._

She laid her hand on his cheek. "Marshall," she said gently, "what's wrong? Is this not okay? You don't want to kiss me? I understand. I mean..."

He opened his eyes and in his expression she saw pure naked want. "Want to kiss you?" he ground out. "Mary, you have no idea. None. Kissing is the very least of what I want."

What she saw in his gaze and felt pressing against her thigh were making her bolder, hungrier. "You could help me figure it out. I'm a fast learner," she purred, turning her nails against his back lightly through the fabric.

He reached around to grab her wrist and bring it between their bodies. "Mary, really. I'm trying very hard here..." at which she gave a throaty laugh "to do the right thing. Don't play me."

The safe and prudent thing to do would have been to get up and leave, to go to the bathroom and give them both some space, to come back and pretend this had never happened. Anybody who had ever met Mary Shannon even briefly could have told you that she never did the safe and prudent thing. Instead, she slid her leg up his, hooking it around his waist, pressing herself pelvis to pelvis against him.

"You mean, don't do something like this? Would this qualify as 'playing you?'" He moved against her making a noise that sounded almost like a growl, and she felt him, hard and ready. A little thrill ran through her. "What if I do, Marshall?" she whispered into his ear. "What are you going to do? Are you going to be...bad?"

It happened so fast that even with years of training and exceptional reflexes she wasn't prepared for it. Marshall rolled her over onto her back and pinned her hands above her head. He stared down into her eyes and said, his voice low, dangerous, "Yes. Very."

And then he was kissing her, and _ohsweetjesusthankyouohyes... _Marshall's kisses were like nothing she'd ever had in her varied experience before. He consumed her, inflamed her, enthralled her, all with just his mouth. Could this be the same geek she constantly fought with, teased, had thrown paper at so recently? And why did that just make this better, richer, hotter somehow? His fingers were laced with hers and she could not lift them to touch him, to rip at his clothing, to hurry him. She lay helpless under the onslaught of his kisses. It focused her on the sensations of his lips, his tongue caressing, tasting, devouring her. He was like a man feasting at a banquet after a time of famine, and she felt her own hunger for him rising.

He released one hand and brought it to the curve of her waist. His mouth left hers, and he began to kiss her neck, leaving her gasping for air as he found the sensitive spots there. Her hand came to the back of his neck and slipped into his hair. His other hand continued to hold hers captive against the bed. She felt his hot breath against her ear, and a moment later, he traced the intricate whorls with the tip of his tongue, making her shudder. His free hand was sliding up beneath her shirt.

"Last chance to back down, Mare," he said softly, hand on her stomach. "Last chance to walk away...."

She could feel him between her legs where he lay pressed against her, _carved from stone, from steel_, and she saw the wild hot blue of his eyes measuring her as he looked down at her. His hand was tracing circles of fire on her abdomen, giving no indication of whether he intended it to move up or down her body. He still had that one hand pinned down, and now he was laying down a challenge. _And he knows I don't like to be restrained. Fucking knows I never walk away from challenges...._

Mary wrapped a leg around his waist, arched up against him hard, hearing a very satisfactory hiss of breath from him at the motion and dug her fingernails lightly into the hand that was holding her own. The hand in his hair tightened down its grip to tug his face to hers for a brief, deep, hot kiss, and she pulled him back the same way moments later. "I hope you brought your A-game, Marshall. You're going to need it...."

He smiled, and there was something decidedly predatory in it. "Oh, I think I'm ready for you, Mary Shannon." His hand slid down toward the button and zipper on her jeans as he captured her mouth for another kiss, nimble fingers working the fastenings before sliding in across the satin of her underwear to touch her....

_Holy hell...I guess maybe he is....._

When Mary woke up much later, she was staring at Marshall's ankles. The memory of how she'd gotten into that position coupled with the very pleasant ache of a body well-used made her stretch like the panther Marshall so often mentally referred to her as and smile wickedly. _He wasn't kidding at all about the "very bad" thing, was he? Damn, Marshall. I may take you home and keep you just for the interesting sex._ She turned to look back up the bed at him where he slept, eyes taking in every aspect of his nude body. _Really, though, is it any surprise that he's a little wild in bed? I mean you've got to think that somewhere in all that crap he reads about and studies there's bound to be something really good somewhere. Never have I been so glad he's such a nerd._ She smirked, turned, and crawled up his body.

"Rise and shine, Marshall," she whispered into his ear. "And mostly, of course, I'm interested in the _rise_ part...."

A smile crept across his mouth, but he didn't open his eyes. "Insatiable woman. Didn't you get enough last night?"

Mary slid her hand between their bodies to where he was already half-erect and circled her fingers around him, squeezing gently, feeling him grow in her grasp. "Did you?"

He opened his eyes, all traces of smile gone, and said, "Never. Not as long as I live. There will never be anything that I will ever be able to call enough of you," and he slid his fingers into her hair to pull her down for a long, slow kiss. She pulled away briefly, returned with a condom, took care of the necessary, and positioned herself. Marshall watched her above him in the glow of the morning. _It's like a dream....no, she is the dream, _ he thought, running his hands up her body, pleasuring both of them, and then there were no more clear thoughts, only sensations of joy.

They were both already up and dressed by the time the alarm went off a couple of hours later. They had finally managed to take a shower, despite his slipping in with her ("Hey, saves water!" had been his lame excuse; moments later, pinned against the tile wall, she hadn't cared if enough water to irrigate the Sahara had flowed through the low-flow showerhead above them). They had eaten cold pizza for breakfast and talked over the details of the day ahead of them.

Their hands kept colliding with each other when they reached for files, pens, paperclips, pieces of pizza, and every time they did, one or the other would run a finger across the other's hand or wrist. It was distracting, intentional, and it became a game of deliberate sabotage that had them laughing like crazy people. Marshall finally caught her hand in his own, turned it over, and pressed a slow kiss right above her pulse point, looking at her with eyes sparkling with happiness and just a little lust. _That's a good look for him, _ Mary thought.

"We have to stop this, or we're never going to get checked out of here and over to Margaret's on time. I am sure not going to be the one to have to explain that we were late because my partner had to jump me one last time before we left the hotel."

Mary laughed and turned her hand over in his to pull him toward her. "If we had more time, Marshall, I'd make you eat those words," she drawled and pressed a fast kiss to his lips before releasing him and standing up to pack the files in her bag, "but as it stands, you're right." She saw him smirk. "Don't get too carried away with yourself. It doesn't happen that often."

Marshall moved away to finish packing his own gear, and as Mary was putting stuff in her bag, she found the thing she'd so foolishly bought for Marshall the previous day during her excursion to Wal-Mart. Smiling to herself, she turned around and flung it at him, saying, "Here, catch," just in time for his quick reflexes to save him from being beaned in the head by the object. "Got that for you yesterday when I was out shopping."

"You were out shopping?" Marshall said, deliberately emphasizing his reaction, widening his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember what I told you on the phone. I have a gun, and you're standing right there...."

Marshall laughed and looked down at the object in his hands. He burst out laughing. It was a LEGO Wild West Sheriff's Showdown set complete with a little cowboy in a white hat sheriff with a tiny star painted on his chest piece, a little scruffy-looking LEGO cowboy bad guy in a brown hat, a horse and a long rifle. "It's perfect. I will put this on my desk when we get back" He tucked it into his bag, walked over to where she stood, and kissed her gently. _She was thinking of me yesterday. _His heart sang.

Mary smiled. "I knew you'd like it. It practically had your name written all over it." She was genuinely pleased that such a small thing made him so happy. "Ok. Enough mush. We have to go kick some ass now."

"Yes ma'am. After you."

She snorted. "Of course, after me." They scanned the rooms for anything left behind, checked for badges and weapons, looked at each other one long, last time, and then Marshall reached down as he had done a hundred time before this day and lifted her go bag and carried it with his out the hotel room door to the lobby where a new day awaited them.

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**LEGO stuff: I had to fudge this a bit, so if you are a LEGO addict, please don't shoot. They haven't actually made this set since 1997 or so, but this is the thing I had in my head for her to give him the whole time, Wild West LEGO. Guess I should have been paying attention about them discontinuing that line, huh? *face/palm*  
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**Are you soothed by the lemony fresh goodness? Okay, so it was only citrus light, but still, this is a T-rated story and some folks prefer their juice without all the pulp. Hit the green button my friends, and make me a happy author.....**


	9. What We Have Here Is

**A/N: **

**Thanks to everyone for the love from part 2 of "What Happens in Vegas." There's not much to say to preface this except in the words of Bette/Margo herself, "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night."  
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**(Not Mine)**

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I hate the day, because it lendeth light  
To see all things, but not my love to see.  
~Edmund Spenser

Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it. ~J.K. Rowling

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Mary's good mood lasted for as long as it took for the elevator to get back down to the lobby. No sooner had the doors opened than Mary was assaulted by the poster of the happy bride and groom that had thrown her into such a confused funk the night before. Marshall had already crossed to the registration desk as a part of their regular routine, so he didn't see her head turn to study the storybook image.

Her feelings now were so much different that just the night before. When she'd entered the hotel then, she'd looked at this bride with so much confusion, so much despair. She'd felt, quite frankly, trapped and befuddled by the woman in white and her immaculate groom. Her eyes ran over the ad now. _This is what Raph wants. He wants the woman who wants to be carried, cuddled, cossetted and protected, who craves that white dress and the shower of rice, the perfect day and the all the trimmings. This is what he needs me to be, what he's trying to make me into whether he realizes it or not. _Her thumb traced her naked ring finger firmly, once, then once again. _And maybe that's what he deserves. Maybe he deserves a woman who can and will come home after work and share her day, who will be there when he decides to cook a special meal for her, who doesn't have to carry herself and others so often that she can't just lay it all down, ever, whose past isn't so full of brokenness that she'll never be whole for him. _

She took a deep, deep breath and admitted something to herself that she hadn't even been able to think before, _I'm not that woman. I can't be the woman in white lace and pastel roses who waits for her protector. I wasn't made to be her. I'm tired of trying to be her. I don't even want to. _There was a sudden feeling of freedom, like a wild thing being freed from a cage, rediscovering its habitat after a long imprisonment. _I think it's time to let her go._

The perfect bride's perfect smile glowed innocently with the force of the florescent bulbs behind her, and Mary's thumb rubbed again. Her eyes trailed across the room to where Marshall was finishing his business with the desk clerk. _And then there's Marshall.... _She released her pent-up breath on a sigh. _Marshall never asks me to be anything other than what I am. He doesn't push, doesn't demand, and he'd never dare to suggest that he carry me anywhere. _She smiled a little, looking at the image as the memory of how Marshall had successfully taken care of her with her headache replayed itself. _Of course, I guess he does carry me sometimes, maybe....but he knows better than to ask me first or tell me that he has any right to. It's more of a fireman's carry than this schmaltzy crap. _The image of her in a white dress thrown over Marshall's shoulder being carried out the door of a church made her smile widen. _Probably be beating him with those damn flowers everybody seems to carry at these things the whole time, too. _Her thumb left her ring finger, and her hands were still, her heart oddly, ridiculously happy at the farcical but fitting image of Marshall tossing her over his shoulder and toting her off while she flailed at him with shoes and bridal bouquet. _I could still take him out, even with the shoes and the dress...._

Marshall turned around to find Mary gazing at the advertisement of the bride and groom near the elevators. Something fragile in his heart that had been taking root since that first kiss last night shuddered as though physically stricken to see her there again. Worse yet was the expression on her face. Gone was the pained expression of doubt from the night before, gone the unsteady motion of thumb over finger. Instead, her hands were calm, her eyes filled with a beautiful dreaming light, her head tilted slightly to the side, and her mouth had a smile bright with humor that he hadn't seen in quite some time as she contemplated the couple in the image. _No. NO. She's not thinking of him again, of marrying him, not with that expression on her face. She just can't be. Not after everything. Not after last night. I can't stand it._

Marshall realized that despite everything that had passed between them in the night, what it had meant to him, he had no idea what exactly it had meant to her. For him, the entire world was a new place this morning, and it was even more firmly centered around Mary than it had ever been. He wanted to walk across the lobby, bend her across his arm and kiss her until she was looking at him with those bright, happy eyes, until he could be sure of her, of him, of them.

The thought that he had become one of her disposable stress toys was suddenly a sickening, nagging voice taunting him. She'd spoken no words of devotion, only words of passion, and he'd lapped every one of them up like a starving animal desperate for any morsel given. Had he been sitting in the museum only yesterday being flippant about being able to supply Mary's physical needs without commitment like her stupid boy toys did? _I must have been insane. Why did I ever think that I would be able to be casual about the most critical thing there is? Why didn't I anticipate that I would wake up this morning more in love with her than ever and she would still be walking away?_

Worse still, he'd been her casual carnal relief when she'd been engaged to another man. He had never intended to stay, not even to hold her for comfort, when he'd gone in to give her the headache pills last night. There were lines he'd liked to think he would not cross. But then she'd suddenly been in his arms and everything that he had ever wanted was there, ripe, lush, his for the taking. No...not taking... arching, stroking, purring, clawing, demanding to be taken.... _And you can't say no to anything she wants, ever, can you, even if it destroys you both? _A tiny voice within him protested that he'd tried to make her stop, tried to tell her no. Dark laughter pursued him down the corridors of his soul. _Sure you did. Tell yourself that if it helps. By the time you were telling her that, the battle was already over. It was over when she touched that mouth of hers to yours so lightly the very first time. And you didn't exactly hate it, did you, Marshall? Didn't exactly run very far, did you? _Images of her below him, above him, flooded his memory as he fought for control of the feelings that were running wild inside him.

He forced himself to lock everything he was feeling down cold. It wasn't as if he hadn't had the practice; he had, after all, been locking those emotions down for years. It was one of the hardest things he'd ever done in his discipline-driven life, though. By the time he made it to her side, he felt that he had the old Marshall mask pretty well in place. He retreated behind a wall of trivia and details of the day ahead as they went out to find the vehicle that had been left for them by the Marshals from this area. _If you didn't know me pretty well, I don't think you'd ever know that I'm bleeding to death from a million little wounds here. I think I've got it well-hidden._ In his grief and pain, he wasn't able to see how carefully Mary was watching him or how her eyes dimmed, her smile faded as the morning went on.

By the time they got to the tiny little house Margaret was living in, what little conversation they'd managed to scrape together had finally fizzled out. An uncomfortable silence sat heavily between the two of them, Marshall enveloped in his pain and Mary unable to understand the radical step backwards he'd taken from her in such a short time. She was mentally reviewing her own behavior for the third time since she'd realized he'd stopped being the Marshall she'd woken up next to and started being....someone....else.... when Marshall pulled the loaned Tahoe up outside Margaret's temporary home. He killed the engine and Mary caught his hand as he removed the keys from the ignition.

"Marshall...are you okay?"

He smiled at her, but his eyes shifted down to study the door handle briefly before returning to hers. "Sure. Why wouldn't I be?" He slipped his hand from hers to undo the seatbelt.

_Now there's a baited trap of a question if ever I heard one, and we're sitting in front of a witness's house with two U.S. Marshals waiting for relief. This is not the time to do this. _

She gave him a dubious look, undid her own seatbelt, and got out to walk down the short neat concrete walkway to Margaret's tiny house. _Put a sock in it, Mary. You have a witness to protect, and right __now, that's the important thing. _Her brain shifted into defense mode, and she began to assess the tidy little cottage in front of her. It was in a cul-de-sac in a quiet but fairly prosperous neighborhood. Most of the inhabitants were young married people or retired couples, starter homes or people who'd lived there forever. The yards near Margaret's were filled with brightly colored plastic toys and carefully tended annual flowerbeds. Margaret's own porch had geraniums in terra-cotta pots blooming riotous red.

_No matter how often she gets rooted up, shot at, or attacked by her own rotten luck, she can still buy flowerpots and grow geraniums. This is why Margaret is going to survive this and be okay in the end._

The house wasn't perfect for defense, but it would have to do. At least with the street being so quiet and closed off, any outside traffic would be easy to identify. Mary turned back to Marshall to see him finishing his own fast initial tactical assessment. They walked together up the two steps to the door and were met by a grim Thompson and Baum and a much-relieved looking Margaret.

The house was small, and Thompson and Baum had been sharing the guest bedroom. There was only one bath. Neither Mary nor Marshall was surprised to see lovely upright piano in the corner of the living room, well away from the windows. A few other pieces of furniture had been assembled, a large soft chair and a wingback chair that looked like a serial killer stalking its next victim, but it was clear that Margaret's prime battle had been to get the piano.

She stood to the side, hands clasped, as they took in her sparse furnishings. "I haven't been here very long, you know, and I have been working hard to get the piano. Plus, it's not exactly like I entertain much...." She smiled softly, sadly and made a dismissive gesture with her elegant hand.

Marshall smiled at her. "Well that's going to change now, lady. We expect nightly concerts since you dragged us all this way just to keep you company."

Margaret's smile changed, and she patted his forearm in a familiar way. "I remember how much you like to hear me play. It will be nice to have someone who appreciates it again. I'm afraid my music wasn't quite to Inspector Thompson and Baum's tastes."

Mary snorted. "The only two taste those two had was bad, trust us, Margaret. We know."

Margaret's smile grew and glowed. She ushered them through the house, pointing out the little touches she'd added to its bare bones to make it her own, to soften the situation in which she found herself, to stave off the nightmare that surrounded her. When they arrived at the doorway of the guestroom, Margaret became aware of the problem facing her Marshals with their sleeping arrangements. She simply stood in the doorway looking at them for a minute. There was no couch....

Mary could feel Marshall coiled like an overwound watchspring beside her. What was the problem now? They had certainly slept closer together than this before. She felt a trickle of confusion which was becoming irritation slide through her. She smiled reassuringly at Margaret.

"It's no big deal, really, Margaret. Marshall and I have had to share a bed in the line of duty before, and at least this is a big comfortable queen. Anyway, one of us will need to be awake and on alert most of the time, so it's not a huge issue. He's a big boy, and I don't think he's afraid of girl germs." Margaret laughed as she'd hoped she would, but Marshall, instead of chiming in with one of his normal smart ass comments to help put Margaret's discomfort to rest just smiled a little, weakly, and turned to go back to the truck to get the bags.

_Oh yeah, definitely getting pissed. What the hell did I do? I cannot think of one damn thing I've done to him last night or this morning that he shouldn't either be giving me a standing ovation for or thanking me for on his knees...._

"Really, Margaret, it's fine. If Thompson and Baum can hack it, we can, too."

Margaret's eyes lit with an unholy glee, and she leaned in conspiratorially to Mary despite the fact that they were alone in the short hallway. "I told my neighbors that they were my brother and his lover in for a visit. Thompson, um, didn't take it well that I developed a cover story for them on the fly, as it were, especially since he'd been hitting on me some prior to that."

Mary laughed, surprised at and appreciative of as always Margaret's unusual sense of humor. "You did not! That's my girl."

Margaret shrugged, a mischievous smile still hovering around her lips. "I had to tell Mr. Pierman something. He's a protective old soul, and he didn't like the idea of 'two strange fellers' suddenly showing up here in the house with me. You should have seen Thompson and Baum when I told them. It was priceless. I kept being afraid I was going to wake up some morning and find that Thompson had shot my piano to get back at me or some such thing."

_I just bet it was...._ "You should have taken photos."

The rest of the day passed with Mary and Marshall catching up with Margaret. Happy to be away from the tender care of Thompson and Baum and feeling much safer already, she was an oddly bubbly, happy, much needed barrier between the two of them as she told them of the attempt on her life, of the trial that was coming up, and of her new life here in this city so far from Albuquerque. She made them lunch, managed to cut the palm of her hand on a glass that shattered unexpectedly in the sink, but not nearly badly enough to need stitches, and everyone agreed that it felt just like old times.

Late that evening, she sat down and played for them. Mary commandeered the comfortable chair. That morning she might have given it to Marshall, but she was not happy with him at the present, so she shamelessly flopped her legs over one arm and left him to sprawl the best he could in the wicked wingback. Margaret began to play, and the music swirled through the room like the voice of a god. Even though Mary's taste in music ran to the loud and brash, she couldn't deny the power of Margaret's playing. She had no idea what the pieces were, but Margaret played them with such intensity and feeling that they compelled her to listen. As she did, she allowed her gaze to stray over Marshall where he was fidgeting in the uncomfortable chair, seeking an angle that would keep it from poking into him. He finally found a pose to his liking and sat back to enjoy the music with his eyes closed. Her eyes ran over his face.

_Bet he knows the name of this piece.... Look at him, though. He looks tired, tired and unhappy. I wish I knew what happened between this morning in the room and this morning in the Tahoe. What the hell could possibly have happened in the space of thirty stupid minutes? Jesus, surely not even I am talented enough to have screwed it up this badly that fast._

Margaret eventually stopped playing and bade her Marshals a good night, feeling truly safe for the first time in months and more like a real person instead of some sort of trade commodity that needed a warehouse guard. She went to her room at the back of the little house. Mary and Marshall stayed in the living room for a few minutes, neither one speaking or moving.

_Maybe he'll start the conversation because I don't know what the hell to say...._

Marshall looked at her briefly and sighed. He smiled a tight smile, and said, "Mare, I believe I will turn in first if you don't mind taking the first shift. Wake me up around midnight and we'll switch off."

_As formal as if we were only just now made partners. As formal as if we haven't done a hundred of these cases, a thousand of these nights. _A sadness swept through her, and she looked down at her feet where they swung over the arm of the soft chair.

"Sure, Marshall. That's fine. Get some rest. I'll get you up in awhile."

He nodded with that same painful looking smile on his face and headed to the guest room. She saw him pass to the bathroom with his shower kit a while later, and later still head back to the room. He did not look at her at all, and she sat in the darkened living room with only her thoughts and the empty chair across from her for company.

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**That's all folks. R&R. It makes me type faster....**


	10. A Failure to Communicate

**A/N: **

**And so it goes... The title for last chapter, and this one, if you hadn't noticed, when read together sort of say it all. Remember that reviews do make me write faster.... Love y'all.**

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Assumptions are the termites of relationships. ~Henry Winkler

Sticks and stones are hard on bones  
Aimed with angry art,  
Words can sting like anything  
But silence breaks the heart.  
~Phyllis McGinley, "Ballade of Lost Objects," 1954

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The night passed without incident. Mary let Marshall take a shift for a few hours around 1:00 am, and they only spoke to relay the necessary elements of the changing of the guard, agreeing that if there was no activity an all-night watch might not be needed every single night. Mary slept a few precious hours and woke up about 4:00 when Marshall's side of the bed sagged under his weight as he ended his vigil. She forced herself not to react other than a tightening of her muscles, and the two of them slept a few more hours until her alarm went off at 7:00.

She tumbled out of the bed and headed for the shower. Marshall changed into his running clothes, grabbed his iPod and was getting ready to head out the door when he heard Mary's phone ringing. He picked it up from small bedside table. _Who would be calling her at 7:15 in the morning? Stan with something urgent? Her family with one of their never-ending damn emergencies? _He looked at the lit display for a moment and his hand tightened around the BlackBerry. _Well, of course. I should have known...._ The display said simply, "Raph" and showed his caller ID number.

Marshall sat the phone back down with exquisite care. It continued to ring and dance slightly on the flat smooth surface of the table as it vibrated and demanded attention. It stopped suddenly after the fourth ring, still again as the call was automatically rerouted to voicemail in the absence of anyone to answer it. Moments later, it began to ring and pulse urgently a second time.

_Whatever he wants, it's bound at least to be amusing after the other night. I wonder how much of it he even remembers. _Marshall picked up the phone again. Three rings became four. It promptly stopped. _Just as well. You shouldn't get involved in that, especially considering how that night ended...._ As if to provide ample opportunity for him to fall into temptation, the little device began to hum and trill again in his hand. _What the hell. He obviously doesn't want to leave a voicemail. Let's let him have that personal touch this morning...._

Marshall pushed the answer button with a sense of reckless self-destruction. Before he could even get a greeting articulated, Raph's agitated voice was filling his ear.

"Mary, why haven't you been answering your phone?! I have been trying to call you to apologize and it keeps going to voicemail. I am so sorry for the other night....for what I said....for the way I acted....I just...just....Where have you been?"

Marshall smirked a little, and had Raph been able to see the expression on his face, Raph would have been very, very afraid. _Shall I tell you? Would you really like to know? I could be graphic in my answer to that question, could use all the appropriate anatomical terms.... _"I'm sorry, Raph, but this is actually Marshall." His tone was light, offhand, casual. Internally, however.... _I'm not sorry at all, you bastard. I wish you were standing here in front of me right now so I could have the pleasure of __showing you how not sorry I am.... _"Mary's phone kept ringing, so I grabbed it to see if it was something urgent."

Raph was silent for a beat, just a minute pause, but it made Marshall feel good all the same. "Mary's not there, then? She always has her phone with her, though. Where is she?" _Suspicious, aren't you? Good for you. Wallow in it. Wallow in this...._

"She's in the shower. We just got up. We had kind of a long night last night."

He said it perfectly deadpan, with perfect innocence, the perfect tone of a partner who never thought of the woman he worked with as a woman at all. He didn't have to put any innuendo in, not even a single leer or intonation. He never had to mention the fact that they'd slept in the same bed. They could have been in different rooms last night for all it mattered at this moment. He knew enough about Raph to know that just the words themselves would be enough to do the job. It was petty; it was cruel; it was small of him in every single way, but at the moment, denied of the physical proximity to slam his fist into Raph's face and watch him fall, it was a tiny pleasure he was going to allow himself just this once.

"I....I....see. Well...um..."

_Do you see? Do you see her at all? Do you see the fragile, beautiful, stubborn, crazy, fierce, wonderful woman who stands right in front of you? Do you see anything other than yourself and your own plan for the future? _Marshall fought for patience.

"Look, Raph, I was actually getting dressed," _more fuel for that fire, "_so could I take a message for her? I will have her call you or something if you want."

Raph was silent another moment as he sorted through the platonic image of Marshall he clung to for the sake of sanity and the things that his jealousy was hinting at. "That's okay. I'll call back and catch her later."

_That's what I'm so afraid of._

"Sure. I'm sure she'll be finished with her shower soon."

Marshall got off the phone with Raph, tossed the phone on the bed with disgust and looked at it where it lay in the middle of the rumpled covers. _That's a fitting place for it, _he thought, and he turned his mind to his task, bending to tie his shoelaces in careful double-bows. He headed out of the small house and down the shady and cool residential streets, pushing his body as he ran. His iPod was cranking out loud music to keep him moving. The playlist eventually turned to one of his favorite bands, the White Stripes, and Jack White's lyrics pierced him, making him run faster up the gentle hills in the neighborhood as if to escape their relevance to the situation...

In some respects  
I suspect you've got a respectable side  
When pushed and pulled and pressured  
You seldom run and hide

_That's my girl. She never hides from anybody. She never backs down. I half suspect that's why she's going through with this marriage to that ass._

But it's for someone else's benefit  
Not for what you wanna do  
Until I realize that you've realized  
I'm gonna say these words to you

You don't know what love is  
You do as you're told  
Just as a child at ten might act  
But you're far too old  
You're not hopeless or helpless

_That's right. Mary has never been hopeless or helpless in her whole life, not even chained up in a basement._

And I hate to sound cold  
But you don't know what love is...  
You just do as you're told

_But that's the thing. I believe she could know what love is. I believe she's capable of love. I see it in her, in what she brings to her job, in what she gives to me sometimes. I see flickers, glimmers of it. If she really thinks that what she has with Raph is the real thing, though, _his pace picked up as he forced himself up another hill, deliberately brutal, deliberately punishing, _then I don't think anything I could ever say will do any good. _

Having burned off most of his irritation and frustration, Marshall slowed his pace and turned toward the house again. He could be calm again, put on the needed mask, be her partner again for another day.

____

Mary was dressed and sitting at tiny kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee waiting for her phone to ring again. It sat on the table in front of her, and she watched it with the same degree of wariness she'd give an unstable homemade pipe bomb. Sooner or later, the damn thing was going to go off....

Marshall was nowhere to be found, but she'd noticed the fact that her phone was lying in them middle of the unmade bed when she'd returned to the bedroom from the shower to finish getting dressed, and when she'd seen the two missed calls on the display, she'd tried rather unsuccessfully not to read anything into the location of its placement. He'd answered a call from Raph, clearly. What had the two of them had to say to one another? She needed to talk to Raph, needed to find a way to tell him what she had realized herself yesterday. She had wanted, however, to do that face-to-face, hadn't wanted to end an engagement over a cellphone call.

_That would a little declasse, even for me. _She gave her coffee a wry smile. It faded almost instantly, replaced by a brooding frown._ Besides, I owe Raph better than that. I owe what we've had together, for better or worse, better than that. Depending on what was said during that phone call though, there may not be any "better" left to be had._

_Marshall wouldn't do that, though, surely. He wouldn't just tell Raph that he and I...that the other night we... Oh shit, I wish I knew what they said in that 3:38 call...._

Right on cue, her phone buzzed. She leaned her face into her hand, briefly. _And, BOOM. Be careful what you fucking ask for. _She answered the phone and prepared for whatever might face her.

"Raph? Hey."

"Mary... So it is you this time." His voice sounded strange. _Oh shit, damn, hell...._

"Yeah. Live and in the flesh. I saw you had called before. I must have been in the shower."

"Marshall answered your phone. He didn't tell you I called?" Still the same weird tone. _What did they say to one another? What has him sounding this way?_

"No. He was already out and about when I got back."

"Back? Back where?" Was he straining for innocence?

"Back to where I'd left my phone." _Cut this off. This is bizarre. He's fishing for something. _"Raph, did you call to play Twenty Questions this morning, or was there something else?"

She heard Raph sigh. "Yeah, Mary. I...I was calling to apologize, actually." She could practically see him. _He's standing in the kitchen, leaning against the island. He's running one hand through his hair, pulling it a little because although he loves me, he's a proud man, too, and this isn't easy for him. This situation is killing us both slowly, isn't it, pulling the fabric of both of us apart thread by thread...._

"Raph..."

"No. Let me finish. I should never have called you while I was drinking and upset. I should never have kept pushing. I know you were working. I should have respected that. It's just that sometimes...." His voice trailed off.

"Sometimes what?" Mary asked gently.

"Sometimes I just get so frustrated. It seems like you're always rushing out the door or pushing me away....or running off with Marshall...." She heard his tone sharpen at the end, and she wondered if he was even aware of it. _What __**had**__ they said to one another on the phone this morning?_

The front door opened, and the gentleman in question walked in dripping sweat, grey tshirt clinging damply to his chest and back, iPod still blasting. Mary's instinctive reach for her weapon stilled, and the two of them just stared at each other. As he switched off the music and removed the headphones from his ears, he took in her phone and her slightly huddled posture and felt all the good of the run fade. He held her gaze for a moment, pinning her to the chair with something troubling and powerful in his eyes, and then just turned away, down the hall to the bedroom.

Margaret had appeared from the opposite end of the hall, dressed for the day as Marshall had been walking away. She looked at Mary with measuring eyes, but she only gestured toward the piano with a questioning hand. It was time for her morning practice, Mary understood. Mary nodded, and took her phone toward the door leading to the small back yard.

As Mary walked, she talked, "Raph, look...about Marshall..."

He interrupted, "It just seems like sometimes you want to be with him more than you want to be with me. Like sometimes, there's more there than there should be."

She felt irritation lance through her. "What are you trying to say, exactly?"

"To be perfectly honest, I feel like he gets all the good parts of you, and you give me what's left over."

She made an inarticulate noise, but he kept talking, refusing to be interrupted.

"I know you two aren't sleeping together..." He said it fast, almost as though he were trying to convince himself of something he didn't quite believe, "...but there are things more important than sex, Mary. Sometimes I feel like he gets all of that, and you just keep me for the other."

She was stalking around the small yard, toeing the broken branches brought down by a recent thunderstorm as she paced. She walked over to the cracked concrete bench in the corner of the yard and sat down on it, picked up a dead leaf from the ground, began pulling it apart with her fingertips.

_Raph is hurting. I'm hurting. Marshall...something is not right there... I didn't want to do this on the phone, but there has never been a better opening given than what he just pitched me. It's time. I don't know how much longer I will be here, and this has been dying long enough. When something is over, it's over, and it's time for all of us that this was done. _

She took a deep, calming breath, just as she would if she were about to go through a door into hostile fire. _Wish I had some backup.... _"Raph, I think you're right, and it is unfair, the way I treat you. I've been thinking about this for a long time now, and although I didn't want to talk to you on the phone about this, I think now is the time. I don't want either one of us to have to hurt anymore...."

She didn't know that Marshall was watching her from the bedroom blinds. He'd been in the process of gathering his gear for the shower when he'd seen her bright red top appear in the back yard. He'd watched her prowl, watched her perch, watched her shred leaf after leaf, and then grow strangely still. What were they saying to each other? Her face was sad but calm. She was speaking and listening in equal measure. He couldn't hear any of the conversation because the small house was filled with Margaret's music. She was playing something sad and slow this morning, a piece he didn't recognize.

_Must be the same old routine, then. He must be making up, must be apologizing for the other night. Well, how sweet. I guess he was too smart to bring up this morning's little conversation, then. Shame, that.... _He turned away before he saw the timbre of the conversation outside change.

"You are telling me that it's over? That the reason is because you don't want to hurt me anymore? That's a damn cliché, Mary. That's the old 'it's not you, it's me.'" Raph laughed, and it was bitter, laced with broken glass.

"Look, Raph, you're a good man with a good heart. We are just not any good together. You have to see that. Think about how much we fight. Think about what you said to me not ten minutes ago. Can't you see that you would have to be happier with someone else?"

"Is it that _I_ would be happier with somebody else or that _you _would be?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" She exploded off the bench and back into motion in the small yard.

"Do I really have to explain?"

"If you want me to know what you're talking about, yeah. I think you do."

"Why did Marshall answer your phone this morning, Mary?"

_Oh hell. Here it comes. _"What? What does that have to do with anything?"

"Come on, Mary. He was getting dressed where you left your phone. He said you'd had a long night. Now you're telling me that we are over. Exactly how much of this innocent partners stuff am I supposed to buy? Can't you be straight with me even now that you're ending it? How long have you been sleeping with him on the side?"

Guilt flickered briefly, but it was almost immediately totally annihilated by fury. Mary's eyes flickered to the house where she could just barely hear water running in the bathroom over Margaret's piano playing. _One time, one night in all that time. Faithful to him all those other times, when he cheated on me just for the hell of it with that fat-assed physical therapist. When I've seen how he looks at Brandi. Where does he get this overwhelming self-righteousness from?_

"You know what? Ages and ages." Her voice rose, and her tone was sharp as razors, savage as ripping claws. "Why not? I'm obviously loose, and he's an excellent fuck. Makes spending all those extra hours on the job so much more...pleasurable. Is that what you wanted to hear? Or shall I get into the dirty details?" _Bastard._

She heard something break, shatter on the other end. "What the hell am I supposed to think? I can't believe you would throw away what we have for no reason."

"There's a reason, Raph. And I'm not throwing it away. It died on its own. Accept it or not. That's your choice. Either way, it's over. I'll see you when I get back to Albuquerque. You need to be looking for a new place to live in the meantime, though."

"Mary..." Raph's voice was pleading, frustrated. She hung up the phone, and stared at the house, still filled with fury. Marshall was next. She was not done ripping, yet. She holstered the phone despite the fact that it began ringing again almost immediately, and stepped through the doors looking for her partner.

* * *

**The lyrics here come from the White Stripes Icky Thump album. What can I tell you? I love their stuff.... I mention it because it's also NOT MINE.**

**On to the next.... (unless you want to review now, which would be lovely, too)**


	11. In a Minor Key

**A/N: Only one quote this time, but I think it covers the situation adequately.

* * *

**

There's one sad truth in life I've found  
While journeying east and west -  
The only folks we really wound  
Are those we love the best.  
We flatter those we scarcely know,  
We please the fleeting guest,  
And deal full many a thoughtless blow  
To those who love us best.  
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

* * *

Margaret had noticed the tension between between her two protectors almost from the time they had arrived. They had not been their usual, snarky, playful selves. There had been no wisecracks and childish shoving. Instead, they'd been tiptoeing around each other, a palpable _something_ there between them. Margaret played on, contemplating her two guardians while her fingers spun the melodies into the air. They were like cats with their backs up, circling before the clawing began. _I would just love to know what __**that's**__ all about, although it really doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess. Any fool can see that those two are in love with each other. _

Mary strode through the living room with rage practically dripping from her every pore, and Margaret watched her stalk toward the back of the house where Marshall was, an unsuspecting victim. _Wonder if they can see it... _She laughed a little to herself, and paused to take a different music collection out of the little rack that sat beside the piano. She opened up the book and started to play. _Villa-lobos. Minor key. Perfect for the current atmosphere we have going on here... I'll just be the soundtrack for this little drama right now and find a way to pry the details out of one of them later. We have time...._

Mary was unaware of Margaret's private amusement. It was just as well. She was primed for battle, and at this point, anyone was fair game. The longer she thought of Raph accusing her of sleeping with Marshall longterm and hiding it, the madder she got. And what the hell had Marshall said in that little confab they'd had this morning that put that idea in his head, anyway? She pushed the door to the bedroom open with a strike of the palm of her hand.

Marshall was standing in the middle of the room wearing only his jeans which were as yet unfastened and with hair still wet from the shower. He had a shirt in his hands, obviously stopped in the motion of putting it on by her unexpected appearance in the doorway. She could see the pattern on his dark blue boxer shorts where they showed underneath the unzipped jeans. His hands flexed on the shirt he held and relaxed. His eyes met hers, direct, blue, and filled with the same disturbing light she'd seen earlier as he'd passed through the living room.

She was distracted by the image in front of her. She'd seen him naked before, clearly, so seeing him mostly covered shouldn't be doing this to her, but there was something about him standing there now.... The beauty of his form struck her again, lean, built like a greyhound. His body was not the rippling mass of muscles that Raph had been, but the power in it was undeniable, focused in his shoulders and upper arms, in the thighs covered now in the denim that was hanging loosely from his narrow hips. The surge of lust she felt for him brought her mind back to her previous battle with Raph, and focused her, fed her anger. She stepped more fully into the room and slammed the door.

"So you and Raph have a nice little chat this morning?"

Marshall had watched the emotions dart across her face, through her eyes, fast and bright as flashes of heat lightning. He knew that he was about to be struck by whatever it was she was feeling. He'd watched her gaze run over his body, take in his state of undress. _Proprietorially. Like a predator stalking. It wasn't there long, but I know I saw it. What the hell is coming next? _Then she'd spoken....

"Ah. So he did tell you about it. I didn't figure he'd rock the boat like that." He turned away from her and laid the shirt down on the bed. He should have known that little indulgence of jerking Raph's chain was going to come back and bite him. Well....He hitched the jeans up and zipped them. If he had to do this now, he sure as hell wasn't going to do it this exposed. His own anger at himself, at Raph, at her, at this stupid situation he was trapped in bubbled, rose, slow but hot, like lava rising through a vent towards the surface.

"What the fuck, Marshall?"

"I'm sorry if I somehow made things worse than they already are. For all my many failings, I once again apologize." He turned back to her and made a little mocking bow of his head. He was trying very hard just to get this over with, to let her explode without doing so himself. Two days of stress over the night they'd had, two days of ripping himself to pieces with guilt and grief had removed the velvet gloves he usually used for handling her.

"What exactly did you say to him?"

_Wait..._ "He didn't tell you? He didn't give you the play-by-play?"

"No. What he did do was start accusing me of screwing you behind his back."

He smirked, and it was an ugly, bitter, twisted smile, a smile with barbed wire in it. "Yeah. Gotta hate that. Truth hurts like hell, doesn't it?" He turned away from her, cursing under his breath, softly, once and ran his hand through his wet hair, a disgusted, angry motion. _There are other places I can be, other places that need Marshals. Once this assignment is done, I can talk to Stan. I don't have to keep doing this. If I can just keep repeating that to myself, that there is an escape door, I might be able to survive this. _

"So what did you finally tell him to smooth things over? I'd hate for all that making up he was so ready to do this morning to have been in vain." He leaned against the window frame and pulled the cord on the blinds to raise them so he could look out into the backyard with an unobstructed view.

Mary looked at the tense lines of his back, saw the anger and pain in the set of his shoulders. She felt her own fury dissipate like fog before the morning sun. In its place understanding of Marshall's withdrawal from her, his distance yesterday bloomed. _He thinks I've cast him aside, used him and tossed him. Well, it's not like he's never seen me do that before, but that he'd think I was capable of doing that to him.... Oh God. And he's not even going to lay me out for it; he's cutting himself up for it instead like it's something he did wrong. He's going to step away from us, from what we started at the hotel because it's what he thinks is right, because it's what he thinks I want...._

She stepped across the room and laid a gentle hand on Marshall's shoulder. She felt the motion of his body as he tensed, but he would not turn to look at her. She wrapped her hand around his shoulder and tugged.

"Quit being a stubborn bastard and look at me. I need to talk to you. _We_ need to talk."

He turned and put his back to the window frame, crossing his arms over his chest. A sardonic smile crossed his face. "Look, Mare...let me save some time and do the edited-down version of this for us, okay? You're about to tell me that what happened the other night was a mistake. You might even say a lovely mistake or a fun mistake, but probably you won't. That kind of phrasing isn't like you. You're going to tell me that it was a one-shot thing, and that you hope it won't damage our partnership, how very much that partnership and friendship mean to you. Then you're going to tell me that Raph must never know, that it will kill him to find out that his deepest, darkest suspicions, because let's all face it, Mare, he has them, are true ones. At this point, I will, like a good boy, tell you everything you want to hear, that I'm okay with it, that I am still your friend, that I won't tell your fiance that I was your one-night stress screw because you were upset, and life will go on."

Mary stood in front of him, his words cutting into her like a handful of delicate blades wielded by a master surgeon, shame filling her that Marshall could really expect this from her. _Take it, though, Mary. You deserve all of this. Let him say it all. Now you know. Now you know what he really thinks is going on. It's so much worse that you ever could have imagined.... _

He stepped forward and he placed his hand on her face, thumb gently tracing the curve of her cheekbone. "So quit worrying, Mare. You're free of it now. I would never do that to you." His hand left her and he turned away again, reaching for the shirt he'd discarded earlier. He felt tired, bone tired as he pulled his arms through the sleeves. He sat down on the bed, not bothering to button it.

Mary sat down next to him, and he felt irritation try to cut through the weariness. Hadn't he told her everything she could want to hear? Hadn't he given enough? What else could she want from him? He didn't have anything left to give her. It was all gone. His fingers caught at one of the buttons on the tail of the shirt and twisted it gently. She needed to go. He needed her to leave so he could fall apart alone.

He was focused completely on the button, on turning it back and forth almost as a zen exercise, when he felt her hands on his face forcing it to turn toward hers. _No. Don't complicate this. Please. I can't...I can't..._

She kissed him. It was soft, it was sweet, and there was something in it that he did not recognize at first. _Gentleness? Apology? _ Helplessly, he felt the tender pressure of her lips on his. She pulled away to look at him.

"Mare," he said, his voice breaking, "don't....just don't. You'll break me. You can't have it both ways. I can't stand it. I can't be casual with you. You matter too much to me."

"What makes you think this is casual?" Her hands cupped his face. "Does it feel casual?" She pulled him back to her, and her mouth was on his again. For the life of him, despite the howling glee of the dark hateful voice in his head, he could not resist her. _It's all right. There will be plenty of time to hate myself later when I'm alone in another city. When there's no Mary at all..._ The thought of being without her, of cutting himself off from her altogether, made his hand come up to her neck to hold her for his own desperate kiss. For a few moments, there was only the sound of the piano from the living room and the sensation of her mouth moving against his, hungry and needy as his own.

She broke the kiss and pushed away from him gently. He stopped himself from reaching for her, but only just barely. She kept one hand on his neck, her thumb rubbing there.

"Will you listen to me now, please?"

He tightened up, and she felt it against her hand, every muscle tensing as if for a blow. His gaze dropped, and his fingers found the button again, began to worry it back and forth. She had the oddest image of a dog waiting for the kick it knew would come sometime, and she hated herself just a little for making that look appear on his face. She grabbed his hand, laced those fidgeting fingers with her own. He jumped as though startled.

"Marshall, you are not now, could not ever be casual to me. What we did the other night, that wasn't a fling for me. I know my past is full of...temporary solutions...but you could never be one of those for me."

He shifted uncomfortably, wouldn't look at her, stared at their joined hands, stared at the floor, tugged lightly as if seeking escape from this situation.

"As for it being a mistake, if it was one, then it was the best one I've ever made in my life, and God knows I ought to know because I make enough of them."

He had become absolutely still. "What did you say?"

"Making love to you was not a mistake. Maybe we didn't plan it, but it was no mistake, Marshall."

His eyes shot to hers, happy, wild, blue, but then almost instantly, they narrowed, and the hand tangled with hers slipped up to grasp her upper arm hard and pull her toward him. "What are you playing at, Mary? Not fifteen minutes after you make up with Raph thanks to whatever line of crap he fed you, not five minutes after you march in here ready to flay me for supposedly causing him to think we were sleeping together, you're telling me the other night was a good thing? Didn't I just tell you that you can't have this both ways?"

She didn't pull away, didn't struggle against him. _Have bruises from that in the morning. He's that upset, and he still doesn't get it._ "Who says Raph and I made up? Have I said one word about making up with Raph?"

He shook his head as if to clear it, closing his eyes, his hand still biting into her arm. He opened his eyes, and she saw the eyes of a Marshal who could face down gunfire and biker gangs. "Explain it then."

"Raph and I didn't make up, Marshall. I just ended it with him."

His heart let out a savage rebel yell and did a little victory dance, but his mind wasn't ready to join in just yet. Possibly this did not involve him at all. Hope was a hard-won commodity.

"Why?" His was the measured, even, precise tone he used in the interrogation room. Mary wondered if he was even aware of it. He released her arm and sat back from her slightly. She dropped her hand as well.

"Shit, Marshall.... I don't do this well. You want the words, though, don't you?"

He just sat there looking at her with those dangerous eyes.

"Fine. The words... Raph and I... we didn't work well together. It was a constant exercise in pain for both of us. He wants a woman I can't be." She saw Marshall nod, once, firmly, as though a witness had just admitted to something that was a foregone conclusion. He made a gesture with his hand for her to continue but did not say anything, did not take that piercing, soul-skewering gaze off her. _Jesus. If I were guilty, he would be the last person I'd want interrogating me. Is the last person I want interrogating me...._

It was her turn to fidget. Her fingers found the corner of the sheet amongst the unmade bedding, and she pulled at it, ran her fingers over and over the decorative stitching of it. She stared down at it as if fascinated, her mind racing for how to proceed. _Now for the hard part. Step out on that ledge, Mary. That's what it's going to take. You've never been a coward...._

"Lately, though, I've been thinking a lot about you and me." Despite the still watchfulness of his posture, she saw the fingers of his right hand slowly clench where it lay on the bed beside him. Someone not trained to watch would not have seen it.

"You never ask me to be something that I'm not. You take me just as I am. You don't try to change me. Even when I'm a raging bitch, which I'm sorry to say is more often than you deserve, you roll with it. And you're strong enough to stand up to that raging bitch, too. You don't take it personally, don't see it as a fundamental issue. Sometimes I almost think you know more about what's going on inside this screwed up head of mine than I do myself."

Something in his gaze shifted. The merciless interrogator shimmered, faded. Something more like her friend was looking at her now. Still, though, he said nothing. She plunged on. He deserved to hear it all even if he walked away at the end.

"The other night, you took care of me without making me feel weak. Raph never could do that. He always talked about what our marriage was going to be, about how we were supposed to take care of each other. He never understood that I don't need a protector, a caretaker. I need a partner, a friend. He always saw his place as standing in front of me. You know what he used to tell me? That he wished he could come to work with me so he could be here to take a bullet for me if it was necessary. I could tell he thought that was a great thing to say, that getting shot would be some heroic thing like from a cop movie, no blood, all glory. We both know better than that, don't we?" She reached a hand out to touch the scar on his shoulder, lightly, once, under the unbuttoned shirt. Her hand fell again, reclaimed the sheet corner. "He was always working his way up to the day he'd be asking me to do something less dangerous. I just knew it...."

Marshall moved a little on the bed, just a slight shift, but the angle of his body changed. He leaned just a little toward her now. She saw his fisted hand relax.

"You might take a bullet for me, Marshall, but you would never ask me to step back from the danger. And you know I'd take one for you, too, if it came down to it." She dropped the sheet edge, reached her hand out, caught his hand with hers, stared at them. He wrapped her fingers with his tightly, and she became aware that both of their hands were shaking slightly.

"Mare...."

"Let me finish. You wanted the words. I may never have them again. The other night, when I woke up next to you, I realized in a way I never had before how you care for me. You actually do all the things Raph only talks about doing and you never demand anything in return. You hold all my broken pieces together." She looked up at him for the first time, and there were tears in her eyes. "And Jesus. You let me treat you like shit, Marshall...."

He pulled her by the hand that was joined to his, and she came tumbling into his arms. He had seen everything he needed in her eyes.

"Guess I must be one of those poor fools who loves pain," he murmured, running his thumb across her bottom lip. He dipped his head and kissed her. The tongue flickering across her lips was a question. She answered it by parting those lips, and he smiled briefly before settling in to the kiss in earnest.

Her hands pressed against his bare chest, sliding slowly open-palmed around him to hold him tightly to her. As it had been between them before, need flared immediately and white hot. There were still things that needed to be said, and he fought the urging of her hands now pulling on his shoulders, fought the inclination of his own hands to slip beneath the bright soft red top she wore to seek out the places he knew would make her growl and purr, fought the instinct to roll her beneath him on the bed and claim her to sate her need as well as his own. He drew back from her with a final kiss and met her eyes, capturing one of her wandering hands and unable to stop himself from bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss to the palm.

"It's really over between you and Raph? Done and over? No more rings in pockets? No more brides on posters?" _Is it possible that you can really just be mine now? That we can try to be each other's?  
_

She shook her head and grimaced. "I didn't want to do it that way, over the phone like some damn high school girlfriend breakup, but he kept pushing me.... No. No more rings in pockets. No more brides on posters. No more me with my head in the sand."

_That's all I can ask for right now. I know better than to push for more than this. _"So....Pain," he said touching her on the nose with his free hand, "I guess we're in this together, huh?" His eyes were mischievous, looked like themselves for the first time in days. He laughed out loud and held on to the hand he'd kissed tightly as she tried to withdraw it to swing at him when she realized what he'd implicated with his statement.

"I'm Pain, huh? I'll freakin' show you pain, Marshall Mann. Just wait..." She lunged at him, and there was a brief tussle that caused the bed to squeak dangerously as they used their formidable training on each other. It ended when she started tickling him, and he squirmed underneath her frantically, laughing hysterically. From her position astride him, she leaned over him, placing her forearms on either side of his head. She pushed his hair off his forehead. His chest was still heaving from the laughter, and a guarded happiness shone from his eyes. His hands came up to rest lightly on her hips.

There was one more thing she wanted to say, needed him to hear from her before something came along to intrude on this time. "You have never been casual to me, Marshall, not for one second. Of all the things in my life, of all the things that there are, your being my friend, my partner, and now...this...this is the least casual I have ever been. I just wanted you to know that. If you ever thought that you didn't matter to me, that's on me. I am not good at taking care of the people who I...who matter...unless the bullets are flying." She lowered her head those last few inches to close the distance between his mouth and her own briefly, then raised her head and continued. "I will always regret hurting you, though. I don't ever want to cause you pain..." She smiled, and one of her hands dropped down to his side to tickle him again. "Well, at least not the lasting kind..."

Marshall's heart continued to do its victory dance, including backflips and somersaults, at her words. His mind weighed the evidence it had been presented with, and after careful deliberation decided that it, too, be willing to be persuaded, if somewhat cautiously so. His body, silent in the first debate and overruled in its desires later, simply proceeded to ignore the other two as it reacted using all the tools at its disposal, legs scissoring to flip her over, quick hands darting to catch her own tickling, provoking ones, then seeking out those places on her own enticing form it had been denied earlier.

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**So they've talked. Does everybody feel happier now? Was this what you had in mind? Let me know. There are paths for them to walk in chapters ahead. Some of them might include fruit. Some of them might not. I'm just sayin'. You can let me know what you think about that, too. The button gives you an all-access pass....**


	12. A Broken Vase, or What Margaret Saw

**A/N: At long last, the muse in charge of "Family Traditions" has loosened her vice-grip, and I've wriggled free for a moment, anyway. That story just sank its teeth in and wouldn't let go! Hopefully I will be updating here more often now as I am trying to alternate between them, but in actuality, it will probably depend on which of the two storylines wins the throwdown in my imagination.... For the time-being, we pick up with Mary, Marshall, and Margaret where we left them so long ago....

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Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.

~Francesco Guicciardini

Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.

~Rose Franken

* * *

Margaret brought the piece to a close with a sense of quiet satisfaction, lifting her fingertips from the keys, wrists arched, a tiny smile on her face as the last of the notes hovered and faded. As she became aware of a world outside her music again, she realized quite some time had passed since Mary had stormed through the living room toward the guest room, phone in hand, murder written in every line of her being.

_I wonder if she worked it out or if there will be tiny little pieces of Marshall to sweep under the rug later on. I guess I should go stick my head in and check on them. I'd hate to think they killed each other and I didn't even notice it. How would I explain it to the Marshal Service?_

Margaret replaced her music in its rack, slid the bench beneath the piano, and quietly walked down the hall. She paused before the door to the guest room, hesitant to invade, uncertain whether or not what was going on between her two Marshals was truly a private situation or whether or not the two of them were continuing to live in the denial they had been so firmly entrenched in when she had last been with them. _Well, at least Mary, anyway,_ Margaret corrected herself mentally. _I think Marshall pretty much knows how he feels...._

The door to the room was open a little bit, and Margaret decided she could surreptitiously peek in to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation. She stepped forward and looked through the small space to see Mary and Marshall tussling on the bed, Mary mercilessly tickling a squirming, giggling, and mostly shirtless Marshall. Margaret felt her eyes roll, and she sighed. _Kid's night, is it? What IS it with these two? Come on. I mean, are they six? Next, he'll be pulling her hair and running away, and she'll be punching him and calling him names. Wait. They do that already.... Well, at least everybody in there is still alive._

She was about to step away from the door and leave them to whatever form of flirting they chose when Marshall suddenly flipped Mary over and captured her lips with his own in a very grown-up, very hungry kiss. Margaret felt herself blush bright red, and her hand flew up to cover her mouth as she gasped in embarrassed shock. Marshall's hands, which had pinned Mary's to stop her tickling when he'd flipped her, suddenly were sliding down her body seeking the edge of the red sweater Mary was wearing. Mary's freed hands wasted no time in streaking up Marshall's back underneath the unbuttoned shirt, and Margaret was suddenly backpedaling away from the door as she heard one of them make a soft growling noise.

_Ohgodohgodohgod...so very much too much information. Going to have that burned into my head until I die. _

Margaret, being Margaret, could not make a clean getaway. In her haste to flee the intimate scene, she bumped into the console table in the hall with her hip, and a small glass vase filled with pebbles and cut stems of her geraniums crashed to the floor. She spun to look at the mess on the floor, and in desperation she quickly knelt beside it. A moment later, she heard the door behind her open.

"Margaret? What happened? Are you okay?"

Margaret's face was flaming red, a shade she hated because she knew it clashed with her hair as she turned and looked at them. They were coming down the hall together, Mary leading, Marshall behind her. _He's still buttoning his shirt...Ohgodohgod...I'm just mortified.... _They were looking at her uncertainly, judging her distance from the door and undoubtedly trying to figure out whether or not she'd seen them.

"Uhm....yeah. I'm fine." She was aware that her voice had a high, unnatural, strained sound to it. _I'm going to lie, which I don't like to do, but here, I think it will be much less painful all the way around. _"I was coming down the hall to see if you guys wanted to have lunch before we went out to take care of some errands this afternoon. I guess I had a bout of extra-clumsiness, because I just crashed right into this poor little table here, and …." She gestured weakly to the puddle of water on the floor and the smashed vase, forcing a smile. _Come on, Margaret. You can act better than this. _

Marshall, seeing there was no immediate threat and heartened by the promise of food in the near future, slid past them toward the kitchen. "I'll go get something to clean that up with. Be careful when you stand. There's glass everywhere."

Mary continued to watch Margaret with very assessing eyes as she knelt and started picking up large pieces of glass. She didn't say anything until after Marshall came back and gave them a broom and dustpan.

"Marshall, why don't you see if you can get lunch started. Margaret, what were you going to prepare? Marshall can actually cook, so maybe he can get things going there while we finish up here. You'll need to change those jeans, anyway, since you've soaked the knee with this water."

Margaret told Marshall where to find the ingredients to get lunch going and she and Mary continued to clean up the debris. When the last of the glass was swept away, Mary pulled Margaret to her feet. Margaret was headed to her room when Mary's voice trailed to her. _Escape...._

"Oh look, the console needs to be put back in place, too. Help me won't you, Margaret?"

She stepped over, lifted the end and they slid it easily into its customary spot.

Mary looked down at it and then smiled up at Margaret. It was a strange smile. "So you were coming down the hall from the living room, right?"

Margaret blinked. "That's what I said."

"Because, you see, the way we just moved it? The position it was in? It couldn't have been forced like that by someone who was coming from the living room, Margaret. Only somebody coming up the hall from, oh, say, the guest room, would have been able to hook the console and move it like it was just now."

Margaret swallowed again. _Well, hell. And why did I think that I could slip that past Mary?_

"So would you like to revise your story?" Mary smiled that smile again, the one that had far too many teeth and not enough safety in it.

Marshall's voice came to them from the kitchen. "What are you two doing? Hurry up! I don't think you want to turn me loose in here all by myself...."

Mary shot over her shoulder without taking her eyes from Margaret's, "Sure we do. We trust you. Besides, if it's crap, we'll make you eat it and we'll order take out." Marshall's muttered exclamation was drowned out by the clattering of pots and pans from the kitchen. "Margaret and I have to go find something clean and dry for her to wear." She grabbed Margaret's arm and dragged her past the arch to the livingroom toward her bedroom. Margaret flashed a glance at a bemused looking Marshall stirring and sauteing.

When the door to her bedroom was closed, Margaret moved to sit on the bed, and Mary leaned back against the door, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Spill. What did you see?"

"What was there that you are getting so worked up about my possibly having seen?" shot back Margaret, growing tired of being treated in such a high-handed manner by Mary all of a sudden.

Mary's eyes narrowed, and then suddenly, she smiled, a real smile, and Margaret saw some of the tension go out of her. Mary walked over and sat down on the bed. "Jesus. I'm acting like a real idiot here. I'm sorry, Margaret. I'm in your house, and I'm acting like an ass."

Margaret looked at her suspiciously for a moment, and then she smiled a smile of her own. "Yeah. Yeah, you are. But I forgive you. I think you've probably had a rather trying day."

Mary looked at her candidly. "You saw Marshall and me, didn't you?"

Margaret gave up the story just as candidly. It felt better, anyway. "Yes."

"Why did you lie?"

"Because I was trying to prevent an embarrassing scene. I really had walked down just to check in on you two. You had come in so angry, and I knew from the moment you two arrived that something was wrong. You weren't acting normally. The door was open a bit, and so I decided just to peek in, but when I saw something so private, I tried to get away...." Margaret sighed. "You know what kind of luck I have with things like that."

Mary nodded thoughtfully. "I'm sorry I reacted so badly. I...have had... a lot of bad experience with people who lie. I needed to find out what was going on. Once I saw the console table, I knew the story wasn't what you said it was, and I couldn't figure out why you would lie to us about something so trivial. You'd be surprised what becomes un-trivial all of a sudden when you start to worry about something....."

Margaret looked at Mary and said hesitantly, "Now that you know that I know...."

Mary's lips quirked, "Why does that sound like the beginning of a joke of some kind?" She laughed a little and then sighed. "Yeah, okay. Now that I know that you know....What do you want to know?"

Margaret shook her head, reached out and gently patted Mary's hand. She leaned in and kissed Mary on the cheek as a sister would, at least as a sister might if Mary had had a sister who wasn't a screaming drama queen. "I just wanted to say that I'm very happy for you both. I've always wondered what you two were waiting for. That's all."

She stood and went to her closet to find a pair of jeans that weren't soaked with plant debris and water, leaving Mary sitting on the foot of the bed smiling rather foolishly to herself.

---

They went back into the kitchen a little while later to find Marshall immersed in his cooking. He saw them entering the living room, and he shooed them out of the kitchen.

"No, no, no! You two merry well told me to come start lunch and when I begged for help, you threw me to the wolves. Now you're going to reap what you've sown, ladies. Get out. You will be called when you are wanted." He dismissed them with an imperial wave of the spatula. "Why don't you two go set the table outside? That will be a good use for you."

Mary narrowed her eyes at him. "Bossy as hell, isn't he, when he gets a little taste of power? Have to do something about that later, oh yes indeed...." She did, however, go with Margaret over to the area where the elements for setting the table were kept. Margaret left the room with a handful of cutlery and napkins. Mary took down the plates and followed. She returned to get some glasses a moment later after putting down her load. Margaret was busily arranging the items on the worn little metal patio set.

Mary sniffed the air as she returned to the kitchen. It didn't smell bad at all. She knew from experience that Marshall could cook, but she had no idea what he was up to here and now, had no idea even what ingredients might be in the tiny kitchen. Was that beef?

"Okay, slick," she said, sidling up behind him, trying to peer over his shoulder at the pans on the stove. "But remember what I said earlier. If it's crap, you're eating it, and Margaret and I get to order takeout. And I'm not sharing."

He glanced to the door to make sure Margaret was still outside, and he turned his head and said in a low tone pitched for her ears only, "Have I ever failed to satisfy any of your appetites?"

She smiled a wicked grin, "I don't know. This is the first time I've tried you in the kitchen." Unable to resist, she slipped her hands down to slide them in his back pockets, squeezing his behind as she did so and leaning in to nuzzle his neck behind his ear.

His breath hitched slightly, but his only other response was that arched brow. "Wicked, wicked woman. Now you're just trying to distract me. Go on and get out of here, or we're going to have two problems."

She laughed, and the warm rush of her breath fanned over his neck, making his eyes close with the pleasure of it. "And those would be?" Her fingers flexed in his back pockets.

"Well, ruined lunch for one, because I'm about to toss you onto the countertop and satisfy another hunger if you keep doing what you're doing right now. I have to say that by the time I'm done, this will all likely be very, very burned." He lay down the spatula carefully and turned in her arms to capture her mouth in a kiss.

"Mmm...well, can't say that doesn't actually sound like fun," she purred when he stepped back a little. "But I'm curious. What would problem two be?"

He smiled a little and looked out at the yard again. "A shocked hostess. I don't want to add more stress to Margaret's life than she already has. She did request us specially, and after what she went through with Thompson and Baum, I would hate for her to walk in on us, well...making lunch..."

Mary just looked at him a minute, and she started to giggle. The giggle became a full-fledged laugh. The laugh became a howl, and she was clinging to him gasping for breath.

"Mary, what in the world is wrong with you? What did I say?"

"You. You are classic, Marshall Mann. Look. Let me just tell you this. Margaret has already seen us... um...how shall I put this so as not to offend any of the delicate sensibilities that seem to be so rampant around this household...doing the prepwork....earlier today."

"She saw us what? Oh... OH....oh....." Marshall's ears started to turn red, and he began to blink.

"Yeah."

"So...the vase in the hall.... Oh."

"Uh-huh. See, you do catch on eventually."

He turned back to the stove and picked up the spatula again, stirring the mixture in the skillet. "Was she upset about it?"

_Why do I suddenly feel like Margaret is our child who just walked in on Mommy and Daddy for the first time? This is absurd. We were just kissing...._

"Uh, not so much, no. She actually basically asked me why the hell we waited so long to get around to it."

Marshall's eyes shot to hers where she was leaning against the counter, amused grin still dancing across her lips. An incredulous smile of his own appeared, but the embarrassed pink still rode his ears and neck. _Aww...isn't he cute? Makes me want to snuggle and cuddle him when he's all flustered like that. And other things not quite so nurturing....._

"Well, that was...unexpected...."

"Umm-hmm...."

"So. What now?"

"So," she said, pushing herself off the counter and leaning in close to him, "now, you finish lunch, Margaret and I go wait for you to serve us, and then we all go to town to run some errands."

He smiled softly, and his eyes dropped to her lips before coming back up to meet hers again. "And after that?" His tone was low, gentle, and something in it sent little frissons up her spine.

"After that, I guess we play it by ear." She leaned in and pressed a quick gentle kiss to his mouth before turning and heading back out to the patio where Margaret was waiting.

---

Lunch, as it happened, was excellent. Marshall had made a throw-together meal with some left-over steak he'd found in the refrigerator and served it over some rice with some vegetables. They ate and talked, laughed, reminisced, and planned.

As they finished up, Mary pushed her plate away from her and exclaimed, "Jesus, Marshall, if I'd known you could do this, I'd have had you in the kitchen every night."

He raised that brow and looked at her over the rim of his soda glass. "Well, Mary, you can have all of me anywhere you want any night at all, but do you really think it's polite to say in front of Margaret?"

It was such a natural comeback, one of his lascivious teases, something that they would have said a million times in front of anybody, really, Stan, Jinx, even probably Raph before all that came to a crashing ruin, but their new status suddenly made everyone at the table suddenly freeze uncomfortably and stare at one another, gazes instantly dropping. A total silence descended on the little group unbroken for a moment except by the sound of the neighborhood and the wind through the treetops.

Marshall's neck and ears started to turn red, and he started to stutter, trying to correct his inadvertent faux pas, and Margaret looked down at her hands, biting her lip. Mary's lips started to quiver, and she started to giggle. She tried to stifle it, but when she looked at Margaret and saw her shoulders shaking, she burst out with a loud guffaw. Margaret caught her eye out of the corner of her own and Margaret started to giggle. The two women then looked at Marshall who was staring at them as if they were possessed.

"Have him in the kitchen, then Mary, go ahead. It's my kitchen...and...and....I say...it's okay!," Margaret managed, and then dissolved into helpless laughter. Marshall covered his bright red face in his hands and looked at them between his fingers. Mary was slumped over on the table she was laughing so hard.

"Crazy....both of you. Completely crazy." Marshall pulled the shreds of his dignity around him like a tattered cloak and gathered the dishes from the table. He stalked off toward the kitchen with them.

"Aww, come on, Marshall. Don't be that way," wheezed Mary. "Don't stalk off to hide in the kitchen and wash the dishes and lick your wounded pride."

Marshall's voice trailed back through the opening. "I have no intention of washing anything, I assure you. Don't forget the first great rule of cooking. I cook, you clean. I'm making myself some coffee and cutting myself a slice of this cake. Everything else is strictly your problem."

Mary's laughter abruptly died as she and Margaret thought about how many pots and pans Marshall had used in the making of their meal.

Margaret looked at her. "He does know how to get his revenge, doesn't he?"

"Yeah. Sneaky, too, with it. I think he's been around me too long...." They stood up and rolled up their sleeves to prepare for dish duty.

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**Okay, so they're back. I know this was short, but....R&R, please.**


	13. Blue Cheese Escape

**A/N: It's been a very long time since I've updated anything. I hope you enjoy this one. I've missed the writing.

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Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping. ~Bo Derek

The quickest way to know a woman is to go shopping with her. ~Marcelene Cox

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Margaret was out of practically everything, as it turned out. The errands she'd spoken of earlier were a massive shopping expedition she had been planning since long before Mary and Marshall had actually arrived. She'd tried to go shopping with Thompson and Baum a couple of times during their tenure, but like so many other parts of her time with them, it hadn't gone well. They had impatiently tapped their toes and made it clear how little patience they had with Margaret's desire to enjoy her trips out of her house into the "real world" as she often thought of it.

"The house is fine, of course, but since I moved up here, I haven't been cleared to get a new job, and so I am spending a lot of time in it." Margaret smiled softly, meeting Marshall's gaze in the rearview mirror as they drove towards a large shopping center near her home. "The walls do sort of start to close in one after a bit."

Mary turned from her contemplation of suburbia outside the windows to face Margaret in the back seat.

"What? They wouldn't take you shopping? That is kind of in their job description, you know."

"Oh no! No. They'd go. But they'd sort of ghost up behind me, hover, and sigh if I took too long in the cereal aisle or trying to find ripe tomatoes. You know what I mean."

Marshall, in the middle of turning left, murmured just loud enough for everyone to hear, "Yeah. She knows." Mary shot him a dirty look, but gestured for Margaret to continue.

"And God forbid I need to get something from any place other than Wal-Mart or a big chain grocery. I haven't been able to cook properly for months. I just started making survival grocery lists and thinking in terms of being in and out of every store in under twenty minutes."

Marshall looked at Mary with a pointed look and started laughing. Marshall caught Margaret's eye again in the mirror and said, "I think you just became Mary's hero...."

Mary gave him a big, dangerous grin seconds before she socked him painfully hard in the arm.

---

So they shopped. They started at a basic goods store, and Mary trailed up and down the aisles with Margaret as she stocked up on things she hadn't had time to shop for or been willing to get in the presence of her previous Marshals. Marshall skulked around, watching for potential problems, but he largely made himself scarce as Mary went up and down rows and rows filled with makeup, shower gel, and nail polish and gave Margaret the time she needed to open bottle tops and sniff, hold the shimmering little vials of color up against her hand, and request a fellow woman's opinion on color choices.

_She deserves this time,_ thought Mary. She'd seen too often witnesses lose everything, and Margaret was so alone. _If this little indulgence makes her happy, then I can put up with being trapped here in Girly Hell Aisle._

It was not, however, a trip completely free from peril for Mary.

"Um, Margaret, how the hell would I know anything about whether that shade of blue does anything for you? You do remember that I am not exactly the nail polish type, right?"

Margaret laughed. "Mary, come on! I'm not asking you to wear it personally. Do you think it would look okay on me?"

Mary shifted uncomfortably. _Maybe Thompson and Baum had the right idea after all...._ "I don't know....um...Do _you_ think it looks good on you?"

Margaret sighed and tossed the blue polish into the cart. "Yeah. I think so. Blue will make me happy to look at it, anyway. I don't care if it really looks good. That's not the point of it. It's just a mood booster to look down and see that little bit of color."

She glanced over at Mary who was looking at her as if she were an alien from another world, and she couldn't help the mischief that boiled up inside her.

"Soooo..... now let's find a color for you!"

The new horror that dawned on Mary's face was priceless, simply priceless.

---

When Marshall found them sometime later in Housewares, Margaret was busily grabbing a couple of sets of towels and Mary was standing by the cart with a shell-shocked look on her face.

"Hi, Marshall," Margaret said as she laid a second set of towels in the cart, covering the contents beneath. "We were wondering where you'd gotten off to."

"Just browsing around," he said, his tone reflecting his curiosity about Mary's slightly dazed demeanor. Margaret beamed up at him, put her hands on the red plastic cart handle and pushed the buggy down the aisle toward the shower curtains, giving her Marshals a moment of privacy.

"Mare, you okay? You look like you've gone a few rounds in the sparring ring with no protective gear." He gently touched her arm, a hesitant gesture, still unsure of whether or not she would welcome anything approaching affection from him despite their words that morning.

Mary shifted her eyes to him briefly and the snapped them back to Margaret as if the willowy redhead were somehow too dangerous to look away from for long periods of time. "Nail polish, Marshall. That's what wrong with me."

Marshall's eyebrow rose and he instinctively glanced down at his partner's hands. "Nail polish?"

"Nail. Polish. And some crap called cuticle remover. Why do you need to remove your cuticles? Don't they hold your fingernails on?"

Marshall made himself shrug, his expression wide-eyed and innocent.

"God only knows what else she threw in that cart while I wasn't looking," Mary muttered, scowling down the aisle toward the source of her discomfort.

Marshall was gamely trying to keep the smile tugging at the corners of his lips from showing. He knew violence would ensue if it showed.

"Ah."

Mary's eyes were pleading. "She said something about having a night just for 'us girls' tonight."

Marshall lost the battle against the grin. "Reeeally? How...um....nice for you." A snicker escaped him, ill-disguised as a cough.

Mary's eyes narrowed. "Laugh it up, smart ass. Next time she has to make this run through Girly Hell, you're the one who is going to do it."

Marshall managed to reign in his laughter long just long enough to look at her solemnly and say, "Oh sure. I'll be happy to help her pick out nail polish colors for you, Mare. I'm thinking something pink with glitter...."

Then he fled.

----

After loading up Margaret's purchases, Marshall turned around and said, "Okay, so which grocery store are we going to?"

Margaret, who had been rifling through one of her bags from the store, looked up in surprise. "You're still willing to do the grocery store? I mean, we don't have to. I know we spent a long time in there, so if you're tired..."

Mary heard the longing in Margaret's voice, and despite her own longing to return to the tiny house and collapse, possibly never to return to the Hell of Retail again, she turned to Margaret and said, "Nah. Not tired, and it's sort of a matter of survival, really. Haven't you noticed how much this one eats?" She gestured with her thumb towards Marshall. "We'll be down to fighting the mice for crumbs by nightfall if we don't go."

Marshall grinned, totally unrepentant. "What can I say? Growing boys have to eat." Marshall cranked the Tahoe and headed for the exit to the parking lot. Margaret gave him some brief directions and sat back to listen to the two of them snark at each other.

---

It was perhaps inevitable that the happiness of the day should be marred in some way. After all, Margaret's bad luck was never far away. They were in the small specialty foods grocery store when it happened. Marshall and Margaret were arguing the finer merits of different types of cheese. Mary had long since gritted her teeth and wandered off once Marshall began to detail what region each cheese came from and when, historically, each cheese had first been produced.

She strolled over to the wines, looking over the vintages for sale, lifting a few bottles and turning them in her hands. As her fingers trailed over the curving glass bottles, it made her remember Raph's dinner plans the night she'd left, and she felt a small pang, thinking of home and the mess awaiting her there.

_Going to have to untangle so much shit when I get back. _She sighed deeply. She had felt her phone buzz twice already today and had ignored it after checking the ID, had the ringer switched off. She wondered if Marshall had heard the distinctive humming her BlackBerry made on her hip as they'd been walking the aisles of the store. The first call had been from Raph. The second had been from Jinx. Voicemails from both awaited a private moment.

_Maybe we can just stay here forever, holed up in Margaret's little house. It's not a bad place. Maybe I can just hide here and not ever have to go back to Albuquerque...._

From her vantage point, she could see the door and the front parking lot clearly. It was her turn here to keep this watch while Margaret got what she needed just as Marshall had done at the last location. One of them was always with the witness while the other maintained a watch on the area as a whole when they were with a witness whose risk potential was as high as Margaret's. As yet, there had been no overt threat to her here, but....

A normal person probably wouldn't have noticed the car that cruised into the lot and parked toward the back. It was just an average-looking late model four-door sedan. Mary noted it because she was routinely and automatically evaluating all the vehicles that came into the lot. There was a slight tingle across her instincts that the back windows were darkly tinted and slightly lowered, even on such a cold day, but again this was not unusual.

It was when the car sat still and nobody got out of it that she reached behind her as if scratching her lower back, loosening her Glock in its holster as she did so before calling Marshall on her cell. She could see, faintly, the shape of a driver and a passenger moving around in the front of the car while she waited for him to pick up.

He answered on the second ring.

"Hi. It's me. Where are you _right_ now?"

As the shopper next to her tottered past, she gave Mary an amused glance. Mary fought the urge to roll her eyes. _Look, lady. It's a valid tactical question. Okay? It's not like I called him "sweetums" or asked what he was wearing or something like that...._

Marshall's response matched her calm but alert demeanor. "We're in produce. Why?"

_Good. The back of the store. They can't be seen from there, not even with a scope or a pair of binoculars. The shelves obscure it totally. _"Well, it seems that the party we've been planning might just have a few more guests."

"I see. And when will these guests be arriving?"

Mary continued to linger where she had a vantage point. "Hard to tell. You know how rude drop-in guests can be. Friends bring friends. Their friends bring friends...."

"Right. Well, in that case, I think we need to get home and take care of a couple of things if we're going to have company. You know. Have that warm and cordial welcome waiting."

"Love the way you think sometimes." She saw the older woman who was browsing the wine again smile that knowing grin.

Marshall's own husky chuckle filled her ear briefly. "Know you do, Mare, but that's going to have to wait. Call it in, and send the manager back this way. You do the surveillance, I'll do the prep. Meet you in the back when it's ready."

"How much time will you need?"

"Ahh...give us about ten? Shouldn't take more than that."

"Sure. See you then." Mary hung up and headed to the front of the store, careful to keep her eyes on the vehicle as she went.

---

Margaret had seen the change in Marshall's body language as he'd answered his phone. She'd become sensitive to little things like that like a bird in a room full of cats becomes aware of the meaning of a twitching whisker or a flexing paw. She'd walked a little away from him to select some apples for some turnovers she thought she'd try her hand at when she saw the relaxed demeanor of her Marshal evaporate.

His voice remained calm, even a little playful, but he had moved back toward her subtly, and she didn't miss the way he was scanning the store now. _Looking for threats. Oh God, here we go. Something is __wrong. _Her hands began to tremble, and she fumbled for an apple, blindly dropped it into the plastic produce bag. _Don't panic. Don't panic. Mary and Marshall are here...._

Marshall had closed his phone, slid it into his pocket, and smiled at her. "Margaret..."

She took a deep breath and forced a smile of her own. "Let me guess. We need to put the blue cheese back."

Marshall looked at her, noticed the trembling hands and way she was gamely trying to hang on, to pretend that she was okay. _The least we can do is get the poor woman some food. It won't take that long, and it's not like she's got ice cream in the basket. This, at least, is doable._

"Well, no. Not necessarily...."

---

Getting Margaret out without alerting the entire store to the fact that there was a WITSEC witness on the premises took a little shuffling. It was nothing, however, that was beyond Mary and Marshall. Marshall even found it moderately fun for one of his extractions. There were no bullets flying and nobody was chasing them with the intent to kill, at least not at the immediate present, anyway. He had time to be creative.

Within an astonishingly short time, the small cartload of groceries had been whisked to the front and checked out, then brought to the back of the store neatly sacked up. The manager had told his employees that the items were for a special order that was being picked up at the loading dock entrance. He had even been kind enough to provide a small cooler for the cold food items Margaret had selected.

The keys to the Tahoe had been given to another employee to pull the vehicle around to the rear of the store. The manager had explained that one away by telling his employee a customer had fallen ill and that the vehicle needed to be moved around to the back lot so she could be easily loaded by her husband (who was not getting the truck himself because he could not leave his wife) without causing a big spectacle in the store. Not for nothing were Mary and Marshall considered some of the very best at what they did. Currently, Marshall was preparing to load up.

"They didn't follow the Tahoe when it moved, so it doesn't look like they know what vehicle we're in if this is a gang squad. Thompson and Baum have a team rolling. ETA five minutes. They will update us as soon as they finish their evaluation," Mary murmured softly into her phone as she kept an eye on the car from her vantage point near the front of the store. "We will stay mobile until they give us the all-clear. If it is them, we move her immediately."

"Understood," Marshall said as he continued to gaze out of the roll-up freight door at the vehicle, now parked on the loading ramp in the space usually occupied by eighteen-wheelers of produce and groceries, his stance alert and yet somehow deceptively relaxed as he and Margaret waited for everything to be ready for them to leave. Marshall stood just inside the door, Margaret tucked out of sight in the employee lounge behind him, as the manager himself quickly loaded Margaret's purchases into the back. After he was finished, Marshall shook his hand, and the man quickly went back to the front of the store. Marshall signaled Mary by cell that they were ready.

Moments later, Mary stalked through the swinging doors of separating store from storage, drawing her weapon openly as she did so. Marshall was already gently bringing Margaret out of the employee lounge. Marshall, too, brought his weapon to hand, and they looked at one another. It was time to leave. This was the tricky bit.

Mary nodded slightly and stepped out quickly, looking both ways and taking up a covering position inside the open vehicle door. The Tahoe, left idling by the employee upon Marshall's directions, was ready to receive them. Marshall went next, shielding Margaret as she got in the back seat and lay down. He then went around the front and got into the driver's seat while Mary continued to keep watch, edging closer to the passenger door. As soon as Marshall had his hands on the wheel, Mary slid into her seat and they pulled smoothly away.

Now they'd be on the roads until they could discover whether or not they'd be heading back to Margaret's neat little house with its pots of geraniums and rusting patio set or whether their next destination would have to be somewhere completely different.

Marshall looked back at Margaret's pale face in the mirror, saw the tension in every line of her body. He'd seen it all too often, and his heart went out to her. This was the hardest part of their job, the constant fear and tearing away of the underpinnings of safety and stability that people needed, really and truly needed, to be functional. He fought it in the only way he could at the present.

"So, Margaret, Mary tells me you two are going to have a Girls' Night tonight? Tell me more about that. It sounds just...fascinating...."

---

**It's not much of a return, but a return it is. I hope you'll still....R&R.**


	14. Can You Dig It?

**A/N: Is anybody else's DVR already set? LOL....

* * *

**

There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.

~Mirabel Osler

Gardens are a form of autobiography.

~Sydney Eddison, Horticulture magazine, August/September 1993

* * *

They spent a very short time driving before the call came in. Thomspon and Baum's team had explored the threatening car and found not the gang hit squad that had been feared but rather a totally-unrelated group there to make a drug transaction. Margaret's odd luck had pulled them to that location as if they were iron filings being drawn to a huge magnet.

Marshall turned toward Margaret's quiet neighborhood, and everyone in the car breathed a private little sigh of relief as her tidy porch came into view. Marshall pulled up, Mary got out and performed a quick check to make sure the safety of the location had not been compromised, and then they all unloaded the day's purchases. Inside, Margaret took her personal items to the bath and bedroom while Marshall and Mary opened cabinets in the kitchen and tried to figure out where all the food was supposed to go.

Marshall took the small cooler over to the refrigerator and had just finished putting away the cold foods when he turned around to see Mary shoving a box of cereal in a cabinet full of bowls and plates.

"Ah, you know," he drawled, as she slammed the door on it a second time trying to get it to close completely, "if you have to work that hard at it, it might not belong in there...."

She shot him a long, level look over her shoulder. "I will not be conquered by a box of breakfast cereal, Marshall. It will fit here." She slammed the door on it again, crunching the cardboard slightly.

Marshall shook his head, took the two steps necessary to cross the tiny kitchen space, and reached around her to wrap his fingers around hers over the knob of the cabinet. He gently tugged the door open against her resistance and brought his other arm around her to retrieve the battered box of cereal. She glared at him with a mutinous look as he twined their fingers together, firmly removed them from the door pull, and moved them over one cabinet door, pulled it open, stuck the box of cereal in the empty space there where Margaret's dry goods clearly belonged.

She turned around, leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest, studying his expression as he rested both hands against the counter, neatly caging her in. The barest little grin teased his lips. "Smug, aren't you? Happy with yourself?"

He tilted his head a little. "What, over saving the Froot Loops from destruction? Oh yeah. Big victory for me. U.S. Marshals save breakfast. Film at 11."

"I could have made them fit, you know. Mind over matter, Marshall. Mind over matter." Her eyes dropped down to his lips briefly, came back to the dancing blue of his eyes.

"Mmm. Maybe." He gently reached up, traced a fingertip over her bottom lip. "But you know what I've learned?"

"I'm sure you're going to enlighten me," she murmured, striving for sarcasm but somehow missing by miles. She shifted, unsure, suddenly torn between conflicting inclinations to push past Marshall and pull him into her arms.... _I don't think we're talking about breakfast cereals anymore...._

His eyes were serious, so serious as they met hers. "I've learned that usually the right thing isn't the thing that has to be forced, fixed, or muscled into place. It's the thing that was easiest all the time." And he closed that tiny gap between them and took her lips with his own in a gentle kiss.

---

Margaret had to go to the courthouse the next day, and her nerves were taut. She buzzed around the house that afternoon in a fury of motion, trying to burn off her excess energy. After all, the last time she'd gone to testify, she'd had to watch one of her Marshals be shot....

She practiced that afternoon harder than usual, pieces full of complicated runs and trills that needed her total focus. She cleaned the house until there was not even a frightened little dust bunny hiding under the darkest corners of the beds. She raked leaves in the small yard as if they had done her a personal insult.

Marshall took the Tahoe and went downtown to finalize details for bringing her in the next day, and Mary watched Margaret from the window as she scooped armloads of leaves and piled them in her compost heap. She'd offered to help and been told politely, yet firmly, that Margaret preferred to do it herself. Mary shook her head as Margaret finished up the last of the leaves, put away the rake, and got out a spade, a shovel, some bags of potting soil, and some flower bulbs.

_It's amazing what we can find to distract ourselves with when something stressful is looming on the horizon, _though Mary. _Anything, anything at all, becomes more fascinating, more worthy of our time and devotion than the crisis we are going to have to face. _

Outside, Margaret was stabbing the winter earth aggressively as she began to build flower beds for spring-flowering bulbs.

_And really, it's not that it makes the crisis go away. Nobody believes that the crisis is gone. It just feels good to have a little order, a little control somewhere, I guess, since that one big thing is so far out of our control...._

At her hip, her phone buzzed insistently. Mary unholstered it and glanced at the caller ID: Jinx. She sighed. She had not checked any of the messages she'd been left so far since she and Raph had ended it. She had, after all, had other things on her mind.

_Time to pay the freakin' piper, I suppose...._

She answered the call and braced for the worst.

---

"Are you crazy? What the _hell_ have you done now? Raph is packing _boxes_! He's threatening to move _out_!" Jinx's shrill voice was like a dull, rusty spike being driven with tortuous slowness right into the tender spaces of Mary's brain.

"Mom, this is between Raph and me. It has nothing at all whatsoever to do with you. Please stay out of it just this once, okay?" Mary rubbed her head as if the motion would dissipate the tension headache that was forming there.

"I will _not_ stay out of it. I am your _mother_. I cannot just stand idly by and watch while you throw away your whole _life_. Raph is the best thing that ever happened to you. He loves you. He is a good man. You need to get back here right now and fix whatever stupid thing you've done or said so you don't lose him."

Anger surged hot and acidic. "What makes you think I was the one who did something? Why do I always get cast in the villain in your little family theater moments, Mom? Couldn't it be, just for once, him that did something wrong?"

"Oh, come on, Mary. You ran out of here to do who knows what the other day with Marshall instead of staying to fix a fight then. I know your job is important to you, but one day you're going to have to learn that no job is a matter of life and death! You are so overly dramatic about that secret job of yours.... I mean, really. How much more important is whatever it is that you're doing right now than being here trying to fix the relationship with the man you want to spend the rest of your life with?"

Mary thought about Margaret's pale face and trembling hands in the grocery store, about the whirlwind of motion she was exhibiting to stave off the fear of the unknown and the known about her day in court tomorrow. She thought about all the various men and women, the children and adults, she saw on a daily basis back in Albuquerque who lived with the knowledge that they were hunted, that they had seen or done the worst that mankind had to offer.

"I know you're never going to understand this and that this is probably a total waste of my breath, but once again, Mom, there are reasons why I cannot just run home and hold Raph's hand or yours right now...."

"Mary, the man proposed. My God, how many more shots at that do you think you will be getting...."

Her free hand formed a fist on the tabletop. Could she hear, very faintly in the background, the sound of ice tinkling against the walls of a glass? "Stop it! Just for once, couldn't you pretend to be on my side? Couldn't you, I don't know, consider it an acting exercise or something? This wasn't an easy choice for me...."

"Ha! As if! You threw him away! You always throw them away unless they're _worthless_..." Jinx paused, and Mary again thought she heard that soft chiming of ice on glass.

_This is futile. She's got the bit between her teeth, and she's going to run with it until she falls from exhaustion. _

"You're right, Mom. That's me. Old love 'em and leave 'em Mary Shannon. Well-called. Well, know what? Must run. I think there's a homeless bum I just saw walking down the street who looks like a a good dating prospect now that I'm single again...."

"Mary! I mean it! You get home and you fix this thing with Raph right now!" wailed Jinx.

Mary hung up. "Jesus," she muttered. She looked out at Margaret for another moment and headed for the back door rolling up her own sleeves as she went. _You know what? Digging holes really does look like a good way to burn off some excess energy. Maybe if I dig one big enough, I can bury this whole mess in it. _

_---_

Marshall came back to the little house to find it empty in the growing dimness of late afternoon. He paused in the doorway, arms full of his contribution to supper, listening for clues as to where the women might be. The sound of voices carried to him faintly from the back yard. He crossed to the table, laid down his burdens, and walked over to the windows. The sight that greeted him there made a smile spring to his lips.

Mary had stripped out of her jacket and sweater despite the coolness of the day, and in her jeans and a very dirty t-shirt, she was swinging a shovel, filling in a very large hole with potting soil. Margaret was using a spade to dig into another newly-made bed across the yard, her graceful pianist's hands plunging deep into the fresh earth to bury the flower bulbs there.

Marshall watched the two women for a few minutes. That natural mechanism in his brain that took in detail noted how easily Mary seemed to relate to Margaret, and he was grateful that for whatever reason, here at least, this complicated woman he loved so much had found someone she would consent to talk to.

_At least a little. At least about some things. _He grinned. _I'm guessing they're not swapping makeup tips and fashion pointers, but after today's shopping expedition, you never know...._

He put his hand to the door and stepped out onto the tiny patio. Both women looked up at him and then at each other in that pointed and amused way that let him know he'd been, at least at some point, a topic of conversation between them. He felt briefly and profoundly nervous but tucked his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, determined not to let them sense his unease.

_'Cause they're more dangerous when they know they have you on the run...._

He chose, as usual, to lead with sarcasm.

"So, did you at least give the other guy a chance?" He gestured to Mary's newly-filled flowerbed.

Mary leaned on her shovel and raised a brow. "Well, usually I would, but today, Margaret said we needed some ecofriendly filler material...."

"Ah."

"And you know we're planning to put in another one just over there...."

"I see. Well, I guess I'd better prove my continued usefulness, then. There's pizza on the table inside."

Mary and Margaret glanced at each other and grinned.

Margaret said, "He's good. You've got to give him credit."

"Yeah," said Mary, "Guess I'll keep him. For now." She looked at him, her eyes catching his, amusement and affection glittering there. "I'm sure there will be other flowerbeds later on..."

Together they put away the last of the tools. They tucked everything away as the last of the light faded and headed into the house chatting companionably.

Mary and Margaret got clean while Marshall got plates and managed to put together a salad which Mary, of course, ignored. They ate and talked over the basic details for the next day. After the food was gone, Margaret went to her bedroom, and Mary and Marshall sat side-by-side at the table and went over strategy. They sat in a pool of light from the old-fashioned fixture that hung above the table.

"How was the courthouse?" Mary knew Marshall had walked every inch of it that afternoon. It was his standard protocol. Sometimes she went with him. Sometimes, like today, she stayed with the witness instead. She knew that as he'd checked doors and exits accessible to the public and those nobody else but him ever noticed, learned the patterns of traffic as the employees and the visitors surged in and out in the ever-flowing tide common to every public building, noted personnel and the tightness of security, studied the layout of the courtroom and even marked the materials used in the construction itself, he'd been running scenarios, plotting escapes, thinking of worst-possible cases. It was what he did. That clever, agile brain of his had played chess all afternoon long with Margaret's testifying tomorrow, and when they actually arrived on-site in the morning everything would be as much in place as was humanly possible.

He summed all that work, all those hours of observation and inspection up by shrugging and saying, "Shouldn't be too bad. Somewhere between Baltimore and Seattle."

She nodded, understanding their shorthand for the level of security they'd encountered at those locations during various situations. She rubbed her hand idly, the palm of it red and irritated where she'd been using the shovel all afternoon.

Marshall reached over and gently scooped up her hand in his own. He stroked his thumb across the raised ridge of flesh.

"Gonna have a blister there." His eyes met hers blandly. "Want to tell me what you were really trying to bury in the backyard today?"

_See? Those eyes don't miss a trick. Damn. It's not so comfortable when that discernment is turned on me...._

She looked down at the capable hands that continued to hold hers so gently.

"Jinx called." Her fingers curled around his, closed his thumb inside her palm against the injured skin.

"Ah."

"Yeah. Apparently Raph is packing boxes."

_And how do you feel about that, Mare? Are you sorry? Do you regret that? _He wanted to say it, but he kept those questions tucked inside.

He brought his other hand up and skimmed it lightly along the side of her face. She kept her eyes focused on their joined hands, but she turned her cheek slightly into the soft touch.

"That bad, huh?"

"Classic Jinx. Tinkling ice in a glass, shrill melodrama, the whole "Come home now, your job doesn't matter, you're throwing away your only chance at happiness because who would possibly want you" speech, she did it up right. I really think she has a shot at the Oscar this year."

He opened his mouth to say something, shut it, shook his head, and pulled her forward into his arms. She closed her eyes and felt the warmth of his embrace wrap around her, the physical steadiness of his body, the strong beat of the heart beneath her fingertips. Something that had been tight and painful inside her loosened as she felt his hands gently rub small circles on her back.

"Marshall?" she whispered.

"Yeah," he whispered back.

"Does it always have to be my fault?"

She felt him turn his face into her hair. He didn't answer at first, and she could feel in his stillness an answer forming.

"Mare," he finally said, "some people always have to blame somebody else. They need for the other person to be wrong because if they were the one at fault their whole world would fall apart. They're not strong enough to see things for what they really are, I guess." His hands continued their slow circles on her back.

_Is this what I asked him? Where is he going with this? _She nodded and kept listening.

"Then, well, then there are the people who always _take_ the blame...." He pressed a kiss to her temple and sat back slightly to study her face.

She tensed as the import of his words hit her.

"Because I like you more than the average guy on the street, I'm going to let you clarify that before I get mad and throw you out a window..."

The soothing of his hands didn't slow, and she saw a little smile appear as he drew her back against him, settled her head against his shoulder.

"I'm headed for that hole out back, huh?"

"Faster than you know, numbnuts. Faster than you know."

"Then let me explain. Jinx likes to blame. That's wrong. But I've watched you take that blame on yourself like you deserve it for as long as I've known you, Mare, and that's wrong, too."

Mary pushed up and away from him, stood with arms crossed to glare down at him. "Just what are you saying?" Her voice was arctic, her stance combative.

He sat back in the chair and just looked at her. He reached for his glass and took a sip before he answered. When he did, his voice was calm, controlled. "I'm saying that, no, Mare, it's not all your fault unless you keep letting her make it your fault. How much she twists you up is entirely up to you."

He held up his hands as she made an incredulous noise. "I know, I know, it's easy to say and not so easy to do, but when has she ever, ever, stood with you? When has she ever put you first? You bend over backwards to provide for her and for Brandi, too, to keep them out of trouble, to keep them entertained, just to keep them happy, and when it comes down to the real heart of it, she betrays you again and again, Mary. If you had a witness who was treating you this way, you'd have already beaten them senseless and left them for dead in a biker bar bathroom near the border."

Mary smiled just a little at that.

"You know it's the truth. The only reason you continue to walk on this broken glass barefoot every single time she asks you to is because she's your mother. Even if that's mostly just a name and a biological condition."

Mary looked down at her hands, rubbed again at the emerging blister, confused by what he had to say.

Marshall sighed, stood, and wrapped his arms around her again. "Look. Never mind. I...should have kept my mouth shut. It just...I don't like it when you hurt."

She squeezed him back, buried her face in his shirt. "No. I...It's good to know somebody is on my side."

He pulled away slightly to take her sore hand in his. He kissed it softly, then a mischievous smile appeared. "I decided long ago it was safer to be on your side than have to play against you."

"Damn straight." They turned off the lights and walked down the hallway toward the guest bedroom. "I guess you really are a clever boy."

He laughed softly and pulled her into his arms in the doorway of the room. "Sure I am." He kissed her gently, lingeringly. "Want a demonstration?" He murmured it into her ear as he nibbled at her lobe.

She sighed. "Oooh yes. See, like I said, clever." 


End file.
